exec_harmonious

The Romance of Explosions -- Mana Khemia fanfiction (892 words, Roxis/Vayne, innuendo)

2009-11-06T11:15:00.000-08:00

I have way too much fun inventing recipes for this world. Just for the record, any of the original recipes in any of my fics are free for anyone to use in their own writing; letting people know where you got the idea is nice, but use them as you see fit.

---

Vayne cast his gaze over the selection of ingredients, pressing a finger to his lips and humming in thought. "So... I'm guessing we should probably start with Clearwater, maybe?"

"That sounds about right," said Roxis, retrieving one of the pre-distilled jars from the shelf and handing it to Vayne, who began uncorking the top. "We probably want it to be clear, after all, and it certainly needs to be wet."

Vayne nodded, and took another look over what was available as he finished adding the water to the cauldron. "We can use this jar to store it in, too, since I guess we'll need something. For the base, maybe.... Oh!" His fingers closed around a green-tinted vial, small rubbery mounds dimly visible through the glass.

Roxis mused. "Puni Gummies? ...Hm, of course. Though I'm not sure how sanguine I am about anything that's been in a Puni being used that way."

Vayne laughed a little. "Well, if you're willing to eat these.... And besides, they've already been boiled once and I'm going to boil them again, so it's not like there'll be any risk...."

"For the record, I've never actually eaten a Puni Gummi. Nor would I. They always looked kind of unpleasant." Roxis smiled, stepping back from the cauldron and taking a seat against the wall, confident that Vayne would not merely be content but actively eager to take care of the hard work by himself. "But you're the Mana. I'm sure you know what you're doing."

"I'm not sure I can think of anything else that will work," conceded Vayne. The jellied lumps bubbled and popped as the now-boiling water consumed them, the liquid temporarily staining with the various hues that seeped from them before returning to a clear, if slightly shimmery, state. "Though if you don't like the flavour, maybe we should add another ingredient. What flavours do you like?"

"It's not so much the flavour but the consistency," said Roxis. "Though I guess in this case it can't be helped." He mulled Vayne's question over for a moment. "As for what we should flavour it with, well... I don't doubt you'll be tasting it more than I, but if it's my choice, I am rather partial to cheesecake."

Vayne glanced dubiously over at the tinned cheesecake they'd prepared earlier that week, then back to the gelatinous mixture in the cauldron. "Adding cheesecake to this.... I think it might spoil. --But I could distill the vapours, most likely." He fetched the cheesecake and took a slice, placing it in a separate apparatus and sparking the flame beneath it. "So it'll be like.... Cheesecake essence. I bet this would be nice for flavouring things in general...."

"Haha, that's a grand idea. I wouldn't object to more cheesecake-flavoured things around here." Roxis pulled out a notebook and began recording the details. "So, Clearwater, Puni Gummies, and Cheesecake essence. --oh, wait." His face fell. "She says that's not everything."

Vayne scratched the back of one ear. "Ahaha.... Oh dear. This can't be good, can it."

Roxis grimaced. "...She says we need to use Plosion powder, too."

"Plosion powder?" Vayne yelped. "Th-that's not going to be safe!"

"Well, technically it's inert by itself, so it won't actually explode. Or at least I would trust not." The human alchemist cast a withering look to the empty air beside him, its target nowhere to be seen.

Vayne brought down a tin of the substance and, opening it, rubbed a few of the fine grains between his fingers. "You're right, this doesn't ignite on its own... yah!" He fumbled and almost dropped the container. "I-it sure does tingle a bit, though."

"Yes, exactly," said Roxis. "But we don't really have a choice." He muttered something under his breath.

"Huh? Sorry, I didn't hear what you said...."

"...I said, I'll be in trouble if I don't do what she says. Just put it in," said Roxis, with an expression that almost made Vayne wish him cat ears so he could properly convey his displeasure by flattening them back against his head.

"Okay." Vayne looked at the powder with trepidation. "How much?"

"As little as we can get away with." With a sigh, Roxis jotted down Plosion powder in the notebook, dotting the i hard enough to smudge. "So. What are we going to call this, exactly?"

"Ahah, you're asking me?" Vayne stared into the cauldron thoughtfully, scooping up some of the mixture with a ladle and pouring it off into a bowl. He swirled the still-hot liquid around a little, examining the texture. "What about--"

"--nothing with Puni in the name, please."

"Mm, I was going to say something like.... Slippery Liquid, I guess. I mean, that's what it is."

"Hmm." Roxis rubbed at his temples. "I suppose it's technically true, but it's not very inspiring. Something more poetic, maybe."

"Poetic...." Vayne's ears drooped a little. "I'm not that good at poetry.... Oh! Wait, what about.... Well, it's kind of for a romantic use, right? And it's not really explosive, but it's made with stuff that could explode, so... what about Romance of Explosions, or something like that?"

"I suppose that will do. ...Yes, I rather like that, actually." Roxis noted it down on the top of the sheet, then turned his gaze back to the space beside him. "...and just what are you snickering at now?"

---

...so, the property called "Romance of Explosions" in the Japanese Mana Khemia is called "Orgasmic" in the English translation. Just so you know.

Also, if you thought I was going to pull a bait-and-switch and make this something innocent at the end... nah, that's been done too many times. XD

Watershed -- Mana Khemia fanfiction (1159 words, spoilers)

2009-11-03T13:13:00.000-08:00

Just a little exposition-y thing about one Mana's fundamental place in the cosmos. Inspired by Vienna Teng's "Watershed" and Moby's "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters".

It started out just backdropping/laying out my personal canon, but on the way it kind of turned into a creation myth/fairy-tale-like mini-epic, and you actually don't have to know Mana Khemia to appreciate it. Although it is one giant spoiler.

---

It had been there since ancient days.

Still it was the youngest of the Mana: Wind and Water, Fire and Light, these things had defined the universe since before the first-born monster had placed a foot upon the Earth. (For humans had come from the love monsters made with Mana, though they did not like to admit it.) But wishes could only live with a wisher to dream them, and so it had been that at the first sincere wish, the first time a creature had ever looked to the newborn stars and longed for something more, the last of the primal forces of the world had been born into being.

A spark, at first; a tiny mote of hope, and then, like a pearl formed around a grain of sand, its heart had grown with every wish, a fire that became a furnace, a furnace that birthed a sun.

In agony and sweet rapture it roiled and swelled behind the curtain of the universe, a power that ached with every wish not yet fulfilled and rejoiced at those that, through loving hands, were granted. Yet for all its power, it alone could not bring its own form to fruition. For while earth and water, air and fire, were necessary to run the world, and light to grant it hope, wishes were not necessary for the beginning of things. They existed only for endings, for completion, to raise what had emerged imperfect into heaven's hands. And if humans, beastmen, and their variant kinds wanted heaven, they would have to build the bridge there with their own hands.

It was not spite. It was not a challenge. It was only the way things were: the rule of paradise, that the oldest of the alchemists had received in a vision and engraved on an emerald tablet, whose words were still passed down today in the halls of the greatest institutions of magic. That what was Above and what was Below must act in unity to achieve perfection: the mortal and the endless, the heavens and the flesh. So man must build a bridge, and the heavens had played their part, offering down that vision whose knowledge had informed the actions of many a seeker. So far, the earthly team were doing well, and the heavens held hope.

But it was one man, caught in the throes of a desperate longing, who at last wielded the Art of Kings to form a mortal body, and bound to it that ancient power which had itself so yearned to escape. He named it Vayne, meaning a kindly one; and then he forced it to kill. But it was alive in the world, and no manner of cruelty could wash existence free of that truth.

That night, the little creature, afraid of the dead man and driven out by his lover, sheltered in the woods near the alchemist's house, and shivered for want of love. And that night, a storm rolled over the land, like no storm that had ever been known. Warm and heavy, it crept like an army's advance, saturating each inch of the ground in turn before moving on to the next. Vayne had no memories, and no cover but the leaves' canopy; he did not know that the heavens displayed in his honour, a tumultous sorrow for those who would twist goodness to poor ends. But he felt no pain from the elements, and when the storm had passed, bringing with it the morning and the company of one disgruntled, rain-soaked cat, a new lightness had settled over his heart.

The joy did not last long. For as mentioned, in his newborn form, thinking for the first time as one small life and not the wishes of the multitudes, he had in haste wished to escape all that he had known in those first grisly minutes of living. Now he knew nothing of his nature, and he had forgotten why he had come. In time, from curiosity, he ventured out into the towns and cities to mingle with the things that looked like him; unknowingly, they taught him human habits, and that all his impulses were strange and alien, and should be buried deep in his heart. So he ate food, because he feared death, and drank from the streams, and became humble and afraid of the lesson they all too knowingly inflicted, the lesson that those who are different will be mistrusted and loathed.

He was feared for his power; suspected for his ignorance; hated for the look in his eyes, the glimmer of alien sapience that he could not hide. At his core, he never understood why, for when he stared at his reflection in rivers the strange aliveness in his gaze was always a comfort-- one of the few truths to which civilisation's tides had not numbed his tender heart. Animals affirmed it, for they, if almost no others, would meet his eyes with curious affection; no others, save the occasional alchemist, who would remember passing Vayne in the streets many years after he had left the mainland.

It was one of those who had passed on the word, the story of the boy with the life in his eyes, life unlike that of the average villager or even the alchemists themselves. He was something different, they knew, and so they told of him, and eventually those words reached the ears of she who remembered him, and had tried to forget. She had hoped he would fall unconscious to the truth, but as time went by she became fearful that even the small, stifled expressions of that once-great power would be damning, and sought to contain even that last bit of life.

But the time would come when Al-Revis Academy, far from swallowing up the Mana's potential, would bring his heart to full fruit once again. It was there in the cauldrons' crackling song, there in the shadows and the pale morning light, echoing through hallways on the footsteps of the hopeful. It was there in the anticipation that swelled within his three-year term, there in years that passed resonant with rare beauty, staining memories golden in retrospect, crafting sweet revelations from simple friendships. Those who knew him felt the movement most of all, but it lived in the school as a whole, something everyone felt but no one knew how to say.

The waters would rise. A sleeper would wake. The storm would come once again, and the rains would nurture the land and bear forth a new Eden. As that day dawned closer, their dreams were thick with it, hazy summerlight spilling into waking life; time seemed to slow, circling around that perfect moment when all would be undone, to be reborn sweeter and anew.

The sound of the world holding its breath was alive in everyone's ears.

One blissful moment, one bright peal to split the heavens.

Since ancient days, the world had been waiting.

---

Re: the union of monsters and Mana creating humans, I'm actually really pleased with this creation myth. The unity of great heavenly things and small, earthly things bringing about creatures who can do alchemy, the art of unifying the spiritual and the physical, seems fitting to me. The rather neat yet tragic thing I've decided about my canon ~~as of all of five minutes ago~~ is that contrary to popular thought, "beastpeople" are actually more strongly derived from the Mana side than the monster side of the equation, since the first monsters were gelatinous, furless things. People think they're more primitive, but actually their "bestial" characteristics are evidence of divine heritage. Lorr is probably actually awesome at alchemy.

I'm using this etymology for Vayne, btw: "a well disposed person". Although I rather like this meaning personally. It doesn't say who the bearer belongs to: like Vayne himself, they simply belong to everyone....

To The Pain -- Mana Khemia fanfiction (2045 words, Roxis/Vayne, sex, intense violence)

2009-11-02T03:25:00.000-08:00

NC-17 all over the place; violent, vicious BDSM. Also breathplay. Go bulletproof kink.

Fic-based continuation of this thread. Not for the fainthearted; Vayne-muse begged me, I swear.

---

The first blow struck Vayne hard, in the side, and his knees buckled. Something that was half a choked whimper and half a cough fell from his parted lips.

"Ssh, Vayne, none of that now," said Roxis in sweet tones; too sweet for the violence of this, an odd contrast to the atmosphere in the cell. "If anyone hears you, there'll be trouble. And you wouldn't want to get me into trouble, would you?"

Vayne shook his head, tousled hair all falling in his eyes as his head bowed in contrition.

"Good," was Roxis' only response.

Something sharp and swift snapped across Vayne's exposed chest. A razor-edged chain of light and steel, the shuffle of cards as they fell back into Roxis' hand, and Vayne had wished not to feel it agonisingly but the sting was still there, and he failed to bite back a soft cry.

"I told you not to make a--" said Roxis, the word sound eclipsed as Vayne's head rung from the blow. "Or do you want me to wish you silent?"

Wish him silent? It was a struggle to hold back the sounds his throat forced forth, but to scream and scream against the mocking walls of the dungeon and feel no sound come out at all, his protests reduced to empty air, no satisfaction, no release....

He nodded, weakly, clutching his bruised cheek.

After all, no one was going to come down after them. Roxis' charade was simply that: the bored guard, stuck running a "prison" that was little more than an occasional sleeping spot for cats, had been more than happy to hire out the place, for a cover story of a "research project" and a little bit of a fee. But still, one more torment couldn't help but make things sweeter.

The cards struck him again, a slash that crisscrossed the previous blow; his eyes watering too much to open them, he could only judge location from the lingering heat, but the pleasure-pain throbbing in his nipples was enough to tell him Roxis had aimed with purpose. To manage that blow, twice, without breaking skin, and in complete confidence that he wouldn't just slice through the raised and sensitive flesh... that took talent, and for all he wanted to feel impressed by this show, now he truly was impressed.

What those cards could do much lower down, controlled with such finesse.... Blood rushed through him at the thought, and he could tell from the tightness in his groin that his thoughts were perfectly visible, even without the pact.

Sure enough, Roxis barked out a laugh. "Heh. I know what you're probably thinking right now. This isn't quite what you asked for, is it?" He moved closer to Vayne, the warmth of slight exertion and evident arousal pouring off him, the hand that reached down to cup him sending tingles of heat well ahead of its touch. "You're rather hard" --yes he was, and Vayne blushed at his failure to resist the train of thought-- "to keep my hands off, you know, when you're like this."

His fingers uncurled themselves from Vayne's length, and he would have whimpered at the loss but suddenly he couldn't, and the realisation only added to his need. "Don't worry. I have no intentions of doing anything with this until you're thoroughly beaten. It's just another little ache to add to the pile." The now-familiar whiplike sensation flashed across his thigh. "And another place to target." Vayne sank to one knee, shuddering, the heady mixture of longing and sharpness and way too close! that spiralled through him causing his vision to speckle with stars.

"Beaten so soon?" said Roxis, reaching forward to lift Vayne's chin. Encouraged by the contact, he finally managed to open his eyes-- and met a gaze remorseless and literally burning, twin fires ignited in the half-light by the flicker of the torches around them. "I haven't even started with you yet. Don't tell me you're going to make things that easy for me." Vayne felt his chest tighten as Roxis' next blow caught him off guard, forcing him to draw in air on instinct. "I might just be insulted."

Shakily, clinging to the rough-hewn stone for support, he dragged himself back to his feet, summoning forth a challenging smile that said, I wouldn't dream of it.

Roxis' eyes narrowed to slits. "You're far too cocky."

He hadn't been, and they both knew it, but it was all the excuse Roxis needed to drop the careful teasing and lay into Vayne with earnest. Now there was no separation between blows, no time to gauge what came from where-- Roxis was crushing heat and blades and snarls and fists tangled in his hair, and time slowed to a hazy standstill as his head hit the back of the wall, once, twice, three times, his arms aching from being wrenched behind his back, his air supply choked out of him by hands around his throat.

He didn't need to breathe, but he'd forgotten to note that, acting on instinct, and the sheer raw feeling of it made him struggle and kick and try to pry Roxis' fingers off; but he wasn't having it, he knew Vayne didn't need it, and Vayne knew it too but why, why couldn't he make his body believe that, why was everything going black.... Somewhere in the background, Sulpher hissed, ill at ease even with this scripted conflict, but he barely registered the sound. It sounded too much like the blood-noise in his ears.

The world pressing in around him, stiflingly close, he jerked and twitched limply in Roxis' grasp. Through the haze and the heat and the strange dulled pleasantness he could feel the wall against his back, scraping and rough yet too distant now to hurt; and he knew Roxis must be pinning him there because when he arched forward in a last convulsive struggle he felt himself brush up against warm skin, so so so good, and he felt his mind swim with sweet sensations and the lightness in his limbs and then sharp, the sudden flood of air into starved lungs as Roxis broke the grip. Collapsing to the ground again, he gasped noisily, the sound of it rushing in his ears like water, like he'd been hit by a tidal wave.

Forcing himself to look up, he almost passed out a second time as nausea overtook him, the dizziness throwing his sense of balance. But he needed to see Roxis, needed to know where he was. He'd lost track of time, and there was blood in his throat, and the wavering image of Roxis that formed out of the constellations before his eyes didn't do much to let him know what was happening, fuzzy and far away like a scrying-pool vision.

This time, the pain that lanced through him didn't register as an attack, more an indefinable sensation of presence. It came to him all at once why people said pain made you feel alive; all sense of body and boundary was gone from him, the only notion of his being the aches and sensations of pressure against his skin, all else dissolved in a swirling, senseless void. It felt strangely... meditative, stretches of timeless unformedness punctuated by the colour-flash of blows. He'd stopped worrying about the bleeding, or the time that had passed; his concept of either had faded with that blow. He was nothing, and no one, except where Roxis was, existing where Roxis commanded him to exist, in brief slashes of light.

***

Drip... drip... drip....

The first memory that came to him was that he'd been in the dungeon. He still was, judging from the sound; the dull splash of stagnant water against the ground was an atmosphere-setter. And even if he didn't feel the cold as such, he knew what clammy felt like, and the liquid beaded on his skin suggested a cool, damp place.

He tried to take a breath, to feel his throat, and the first thing that hit his sinuses was wetness. Warm wetness, with the scent of metal. He swiped a hand over his face, still unseeing; he felt liquid pool on it. The dripping probably hadn't been the dungeon leaks, but his own blood.

He struggled to lift himself, but it was like he was trapped in armour, old and heavy and rusted in place. At length, he managed to pry open his eyes, fighting down another wave of dizziness as he did so; his head felt so light. It wasn't entirely unpleasant, and the faint flickers of fondness now crackling through the pact-bond reassured him he was safe.

"Vayne," he heard said softly, from a throat husky from growling.

His vision slowly focused on the gold-and-pink blur in front of him. At first it looked like lights, torch-glow dancing off his glasses and the bright strands of his hair, but he knew it was Roxis, and with that knowledge familiar features clicked into place.

He tried to say Roxis' name, but couldn't. His voice felt all used up.

He felt a hand tangle loosely in his hair, another caressing his back. "I know you wanted to awaken to find me towering over you, all triumphant and proud. But I couldn't help it. When you passed out, I started worrying about you too much."

Vayne smiled weakly, and with great effort forced the words out. "...Next time?"

Roxis raised an eyebrow. "All that, and your first thought is 'next time'? You look like Sulpher dragged you in."

Sulpher mewed in affirmation of his name, and as reassurance to Vayne of his presence. Vayne started to laugh, but quickly fell to uncomfortable wheezing as his lungs spasmed. "I feel like Sulpher dragged me in. But... it's okay. It's a good kind of hurt."

"You really are remarkable," Roxis mused. "Well, if you're really that resilient...." He trailed off.

"Hm?"

"...Let's see if we can get you back to my room without the whole student body noticing."

Vayne looked down at his naked form. "I don't think I'm up for getting dressed. But I think I can manage that, as long as I don't have to move. I'll just wish us back there."

Seconds passed. "...ngh. I guess I really am pretty drained. Looks like we're walking after all."

"I'll help you get your clothes on. At least your shirt and pants." Roxis examined Vayne's expression carefully. "So... if I'm hearing this right... you can't wish when you're too weak like this?"

"Nn. Yeah, I think so.... It was like that back during the ordeal, too. I need a bit of energy to get it started, though the rest is the universe."

Roxis nodded slowly. "So you're basically saying... you are helpless, right now."

The realisation dawned on Vayne too. "...Mm. I... I guess I am." A surge of arousal washed through him, need heavy between his legs. I really am. He could do anything to me. Oh, gods, please let him take advantage.

A sing-song tone came to Roxis' voice. "Completely... helpless." He lifted Vayne into a sitting position, his hand teasingly brushing his erection as he pulled up his pants. "You know, there was a noticeable lack of begging for mercy back there. I'm not too satisfied with that."

Goosebumps crept up Vayne's thighs, a whimper escaping his dry throat. "Come to think of it, neither am I."

Roxis smirked. "Good." He trailed a fingernail down Vayne's now-covered length, making his hips stir with the need to thrust into that touch, but leaden muscles held him down. Nonetheless, Roxis saw the twitch, or maybe felt it, and a little frown crossed his face, his hand poised purposefully inches away from that yearning, sensitive spot. "Do I have to start beating you all over again?"

A sharp, stinging slap against tender flesh: the image flashed through his mind, and his eyes closed as he shuddered. The idea of that was only making him stiffen further, as if trying to expose himself for the abuse.

Part of him didn't know if he could stand any more pain. But a much bigger part of him didn't know if he could stand the lack.

With all the strength he could muster, he pressed up against Roxis' hand.

Firewater -- Mana Khemia fanfiction (574 words, Roxis/Vayne, yaoi, smut-ish)

2009-11-02T03:21:00.000-08:00

Too tame to be smut, too designed-to-make-you-feel to not be. If "smut" included magic this would have a high rating, let'sputitthatway.

---

Do you want me to turn down the cauldron? Roxis whispered against his ear.

No.... I like the firelight. I like the way it catches your eyes.

Roxis chuckled. Really now, he said, in a tone that made it clear he felt little surprise, was only seeking to make Vayne squirm further into his lap at his voice.

True to his prediction-- or maybe his wish-- the boy swallowed a little, his eyes darting away, though they couldn't help flicking back to Roxis, like he secretly sought to be trapped in that incendiary stare. Like some part of him hoped, and some part of him feared, that one too-long look at those eyes would strip him of his will, like the victim of a basilisk.

Roxis was taken with the idea. A predatory king of serpents, few natural superiors. Yes, he could live with that image.

It was Vayne's turn to make him shiver, though, when he felt small, cool hands wind their way into his hair, soft fingerpads against the back of his neck. The temperature of the room should not have left his touch so chill; faint whispers of ice, to match the cold brilliance in his eyes. Firelight and icewater. A perfect pair they made, twin sets of jewels framed by silver and gold.

It took him slow, hazy moments to realise that Vayne wasn't just petting. His hands moved with purpose, quick nimble motions, unclasping the tether that held back his hair and portioning it out with his fingers. The weight of his own long hair against his skin was warm, warm around the cool flickers of Vayne's touch; he closed his eyes, then opened them again, thinking Vayne would want to see him, but then he remembered what Vayne would want most of all, and he allowed himself to simply sink into the experience.

His eyes opened again to a strange awareness: a bright light cast around his face, a sudden spike of heat. He looked to Vayne, who seemed lost in concentration; he tried to look behind him, but he didn't want to dislodge Vayne's hands. What are you doing? he asked, his voice husky with only wonder, knowing nothing Vayne attempted would ever be bad.

Firelight, Vayne said, and the words came out like a prayer. I saw this vision in a dream.... A man with hair aflame, a wild look in his eyes.... I think he was a Mana. I thought it would suit you, too.

Drawing his hands back from behind Roxis' head, he brought them around in front of him, a glassy shimmer spreading out from his fingertips that formed a reflective pool. In its surface, he could see the strands of fire woven into his hair, still hanging loose, a curtain of gold and flame. The tiny threads were worked through it like jewels, beads of pure energy that needed no other light source to glitter and dance. It was beyond princely garb; a wonder that only magic could have achieved.

It's beautiful, he gasped, for a moment feeling so lost, so unsure how to respond to the display.

You're beautiful, said Vayne, dispelling the mirror, leaving the firelight to flicker in his eyes; and in the way it danced there, his flame mingled with Vayne's icy pools, he refound his courage, and moved in.

His hair tumbling over Vayne's shoulders, wreathing them both in pearls of fire, the cauldron-light suddenly seemed pale.

Unmade In His Image -- Mana Khemia fanfiction (4053 words, spoilers, violence/gore)

2009-10-28T03:40:00.000-07:00

This needs revision, but posting it here for now so I at least won't have forgotten to should I never actually rewrite it.

I've sort of had this fic planned since forever; it was one of my first fic ideas for this fandom. It's also pretty brutal.

---

The cards' motions rippled the air between them, Roxis' Mana-enhanced moves slicing through space and time, bending reality into right angles of light. Vayne threw his blade up to cover his face; a katana of Anna's, a light weapon they'd figured he could handle, but it wasn't Sulpher, he wasn't used to anything but Sulpher, was so weak without Sulpher, they both thought at the same time, and the relentless flurry of Roxis' attacks was threatening his grip on the sword.

Planting a foot behind him to try and steady himself, Vayne felt its weight crack the loose earth beneath, causing him to slide further into the shale; he wasn't expecting the weakened footing, and the next blow threw his balance enough that, in putting all of his weight behind his block, he lost it completely, twisting on his ankle with a yelp.

Dropping the sword like it was hot, his hands curled into cringing fists, Vayne collapsed on his side, balled up fetally in the dirt.

"Please, gods, no more of this...." he whimpered.

A bark of laughter escaped Roxis. "Giving up so soon? You really don't have it in you these days, do you?"

Vayne's body shuddered, as if something had hit him; he wasn't that injured, Roxis thought, yet Vayne was never one to cry wolf in a fight. Maybe he'd struck a blow he hadn't noticed.... But speculation fell by the wayside as with some effort, Vayne lifted his head to regard him, the haunted look in his eyes briefly stripping Roxis of the power of complex thought. "No more...."

"I heard you perfectly well the first time," said Roxis, trying not to think about what that look could mean. He'd only seen that look in one circumstance before: it was the look of survivalist terror in a beast's eyes just before you struck it down. But Vayne had never cared about survival. Indeed, he'd always been cavalier when it came to his own safety. "I'm hardly so barbaric as to sheathe my blades in a man when he's down."

Vayne didn't seem to be listening. He'd gone from staring at Roxis to staring at his hand, blood pooling on his forehead anew from where he'd wiped it with his palm. It wasn't a deep wound, barely a scrape, but he seemed to regard it with all the horror due a mortal blow. "Can it be over now... please...."

"It's already over. Come on, get up."

***

They'd retreated to the inn they'd been staying at. Vayne had sat in a hunched little ball looking sorry for himself, Sulpher curled at his side, until Roxis had, grudgingly, tended the wound on his forehead, all the while muttering that Vayne could have done it himself. Since when had the boy been so squeamish? Roxis was the one who usually flinched at gory scenes, but he could at least bring himself to dab at the gash with a cloth and the contents of a healing vial.

"I feel sick," he said, softly, and indeed he was shivering and going pale at Roxis' touch.

"Does it hurt that much?" said Roxis. Now he was really beginning to worry about Vayne. Maybe he had hit him harder than he'd accounted for; a stab of guilt accosted him at the thought that he might have treated a severely injured boy so flippantly. "...Did you take a blow anywhere else? Let me see under your shirt." The two were used to dressing each other's wounds, and Roxis seeing Vayne's naked torso wasn't anything new to either of them by now. But Vayne shrank away like he never had before, burying his face in his arms with a suddenness unmindful of his injury.

"...what was that? I can't even hear you," said Roxis, in response to the muffled mumbling that ensued from within Vayne's deathgrip on himself.

Vayne raised his head just enough to be heard, his eyes glassy with tears. "I said don't come near me, don't look at me...."

Roxis frowned, sitting back to give Vayne his space. This wasn't like him at all. "What's going on?" he said. "This isn't normal for--"

"--no, don't go, stay here, please," said Vayne.

"You said you didn't want me near you. Make up your mind." Roxis scooted back up the bed, feeling like a yo-yo.

"...I don't want to be alone... but I don't want you to see... I... Roxis, I don't know, just don't leave me, please...."

Roxis sighed, and attempted to rephrase the question. "Are you hurt anywhere else?"

"It hurts everywhere...."

"Then let me look at you. Come on, it's for your own good." Gently, more gently than he ever had before, he took Vayne's hands and guided them away from his face. "If you're injured, we'll have to treat it." This time, Vayne made no move to protest as Roxis unbuttoned his shirt, just stared at the ground and looked uncomfortable.

Roxis carefully lifted the fabric away from Vayne's skin, trying his best not to aggravate any cuts or bruises that might be underneath. "...You're perfectly fine," he said, confused. "You're not even scuffed."

"But it's not right...."

"What's not right? I'm... sorry if it's embarrassing you to show yourself, but you've never minded before...." He closed the front halves of Vayne's shirt back over his chest. This was an uncharacteristic reaction, but still, now that he could see he wasn't injured, there was no point in making him suffer further.

"I'm not right, Roxis... my body... my everything... I feel like I'm rotting away.... You can't see it, it's under my skin, but it's everything... all of it...."

Roxis put a hand to Vayne's forehead, but the wound nearby was too warm for him to tell if Vayne was feverish. "...Are you sick?"

"No," Vayne said, in a voice that could have cracked the sky. "I'm human."

Oh.

Suddenly, a lot of what he'd been saying did start to fall into place. "...Wait, but... you've been human for a while now, Vayne. Is something new happening to you?" The next words that came caught in his throat, and he stammered them out awkwardly. "...A-are you dying...?"

A little bit of his world seemed to slip away with that admission, and in the silence that followed he tried to claw the words back, unsay what he'd said, stop the possibilities spilling out into empty air.... Vayne, dying. He'd always maintained that Vayne was his rival, nothing more, that he only pursued him to claim victory over the boy who had humiliated him so terribly at Al-Revis Academy. But if he searched his heart honestly, he had to admit that that was a façade, and a ridiculous one at that. Who follows someone around just to keep fighting with them? And now, the sickness he felt at the possibility of losing Vayne was forcing him to accept that he viewed the boy as a friend, or maybe something more.

But the specifics were beside the point. Vayne. Dying. What it came down to was that if he lost Vayne, he wouldn't know what to do.

"...Only inside," Vayne said eventually, breaking the silence and filling Roxis with a strange combination of relief and discomfort. "It's just... oh, Roxis, I've made such a terrible mistake, I wish I'd never...." His words trailed off, and his fists clenched and unclenched in a futile gesture. "...I wish.... I... I...." His hands flew up to cover his face, and great, heaving sobs began to rack his body. Sulpher mewed uncomfortably, clearly wanting to help but no longer having any real ability to reach out to his once-pactmate.

Roxis couldn't stand it any longer. As embarrassed as he was about the simple act, he closed the distance between himself and Vayne and wrapped an arm around his shaking shoulders. "...You can't wish any more, can you," he said, softly. "Is that what hurts?"

"It-- it-- it's all of it, Roxis, it's not feeling right, it's being so... it's not about being weak, I never wanted to be strong, it's the life in me, I feel like it's gone, I don't feel like anything...."

Roxis let the information sink in as Vayne shivered in his embrace. Vayne had never been a human. Oh, he'd looked like one, but it had just been a seeming, an appearance that existed because Mana had to look like something. He'd wished to just be an ordinary human, but he'd made the ignorant assumption that human was something he could change back to, a state of being he'd ever inhabited. Now, he was trapped as something he had never been made to be, without the ability to change back. ...And not just any something, but a something far less grand, far less brightly-souled, than the sacred being as which he'd lived his whole life, unawares.

Oh gods. He really had made a mistake, hadn't he....

At a loss for what else to do, he combed his fingers gently through Vayne's soft, tousled hair. Even that spoke to his original nature; a silky, silver-grey mass that accepted his fingers like the plush fur of a cat, certainly too smooth for human hair. It felt like heaven. But that, like the rest of him now, was only a pale reminder of what he had used to be. The magic that had birthed it was gone, leaving only those shallow signs that it had ever been there at all.

His touches didn't seem to console Vayne, but nor did they seem to harm him, so he kept stroking, hoping he could embody some small measure of peace for the boy. As he did so, he found his mind drifting back to thoughts of how that hair was so inhumanly soft, how it was now just one last lingering fragment of something that had been so much greater.... A lump rose in his own throat at that; and if it made him balk, how much more must Vayne be hurting, now?

He couldn't be left like this. There had to be some solution. But what could it be?

"...Theofratus made you," Roxis managed to say, eventually, after some thinking. "He made you like this-- like-- like you were, with alchemy. So maybe alchemy could change you back." Not that he had any idea how.

"But... but I killed him. The other me, the one who held the key to my powers. I made him go away...." Vayne let out a little choked sound.

They sat wordless for minutes, the silence only punctuated by Vayne's small sniffles and his restless attempts to get comfortable against Roxis. Somewhere in the inn, a clock ticked heavily, and out of a sheer lack of any idea where to start with this he found himself counting the seconds. Each one a sliver of Vayne's chance to be whole again, forever slipped away.

"...Where do people go, when they die?" Vayne asked plaintively, as if he'd only just begun to consider the idea.

"The Above," said Roxis. "The light." You got through three years of alchemy without figuring that out? ...No, you probably never even had a reason to wonder where people went. Deep down in your heart, you knew you'd never die. Until you made it otherwise, until you wished the truth away.

"Then... then that's where I have to go, too," said Vayne, and he fisted his hand into Roxis' shirt, like he'd decided. "To get my other self back. To try and find what I lost... no, what I gave up. I have to try."

"Don't be ridiculous, you'd just get yourself killed-- oh. Oh. No." With those words, the rest of his world summarily slipped out from under him. "That's your intent, isn't it. Oh, gods, Vayne, please don't tell me it's that bad." He knew it was that bad. It had to be. But couldn't Vayne, couldn't he just-- no, he was being selfish, just wanting him to stay for his own sake, but... gods. How had things come to this.... Why had he ever made that wish?

"I can't deny it," Vayne said, surrender in his tone. "This... it means everything to me. If it's a gamble between death and being whole, I'd rather either than live on like this. I... I'm sorry, Roxis. I can't. Any longer."

Roxis' words were thick in his throat. "...You won't be changing your mind, will you."

Vayne shook his head. "...Will you... will you keep holding me, while I...."

"What, now?" Roxis blanched. Can't I at least have some more time....

"I... I don't want to wait," said Vayne. "Out of mercy... please let me go...."

Roxis pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling deeply. This was such a lot to commit to all at once, but there wasn't time to spend weighing the consequences. Vayne would go whether he did this or not, and.... "If you're going to do this, I-- I may as well be the one to...." He couldn't finish the sentence. "So... so you don't hurt yourself, any more than you need to... oh gods, Vayne." Involuntarily, he burst forth with a gasp, and tears began to spill down his cheeks.

"Thank you, Roxis...." Vayne sounded almost joyful, compared to moments ago. How long had it been since he'd heard that emotion in his voice? Too long, and he hadn't even been paying attention.

"You're welcome," he choked out, not sure it felt like the right thing to say. Damn it, there wasn't a right thing to say. Just... damn it.

When Vayne leaned back into his arms without a word, exposing his throat like a submissive animal, he almost startled out of his skin. He didn't know what he'd been expecting, but it certainly wasn't this. And yet, why not this? Of all the actions that were typically Vayne, such blatant surrender was hardly the most infrequent. It just baffled him, utterly, that anyone could render themselves so very helpless and seem to find it comforting.

Vayne had never been human, and even now, the alien soul he possessed struggled within that flesh.

Taking out one of his bladed cards, he pressed the steel edge against Vayne's throat, closing his eyes. --No, this isn't going to work. The card didn't even cover the width of his neck, and it would take far more leverage than he could have while holding him to bring it down with enough force to sever his spine. Likely, he would end up with Vayne gasping bloodily for breath in his arms, taking hours to die.

The image made his stomach lurch. How can I even be contemplating doing this? He was going to kill another person, a teenage boy just like himself. Except Vayne wasn't like him, he was nothing like him, and that was why he needed to, because Vayne could never be happy living as just another teenage boy. Ever since he'd seen that hollow look in his eyes, he'd known that to the core. In every sense that was meaningful, Vayne Aurelius was already dead; and this, only a quest to revive him.

But how? How do I do it? He glanced over at the katana Anna had synthesised for them; but that, too, would not allow him the leverage if he was to continue to hold Vayne. Smother him with a pillow? That would be kinder, at least, less brutal; but it still wasn't swift enough, not for his liking, not if he had to hold Vayne down while he struggled and twisted and his instincts fought his needs. If Jess were here, she could probably synthesise a poison that would kill him in moments; but he didn't have that skill, and there weren't facilities for alchemy at the inn, in any case.

In desperation, he called on his only remaining option. He didn't like to make her do it, but she was the only one with the power to make this painless. Eital, please....

The being of light manifested on the ground beside them. No further discussion passed their lips; the request was simple enough, and he could tell from her eyes that the Mana knew, more acutely than he, what Vayne's incautious wish had brought upon him. Sulpher hissed at her, protective of his master, but the cat could not know what was most merciful here, and she paid him no heed but a solemn, sorrowed glance.

Poor child, she intoned of Vayne, and closed her jaw on his throat.

***

Roxis lifted his head, fighting past the waves of dizziness and the colours that spotted his vision, trying to make out the blurry shapes that made up the room he was in.

It took him some moments to recognise Vayne, or at least the form that had once housed him; his neck snapped at an ugly angle, his frail corpse lying in a tangled heap on sheets soaked through with blood.

I'm sorry, she tried to tell him, but her words failed to reach his mind as the world fell to blackness once more.

***

It was several more hours before he could remain conscious around Vayne; conscious, and without his guts being stabbed by nauseous bouts that he struggled to fight down, being in no state to either change his clothing or leave his room for the outhouse. Eventually, his body had succumbed and he'd fled from the room, hastily grabbing his cloak from a chair to throw over his bloodstained garb. His face was probably still flecked with it, but details; people could assume what they liked, as long as it wasn't from clothes stained almost collar to toe by the blood of another human.

Human. Almost as much as the fact that they'd killed a man, it was the fact that there'd been a man to murder that turned his stomach inside out. Vayne shouldn't have bled, shouldn't have been able to turn cold and pale like he was now, his eyes empty of life and that unnaturally fine hair clumped together with dark, sticky fluid. It gave him shivers even separate from his feelings for Vayne, a cold, clenching feeling deep inside like when he'd been to see the sealed Mana down in the ruins. The corpse of a once-Mana, a thing that should not be.

There was little hope of dressing Vayne to look presentable, but he dressed himself, leaving his old clothes in a pile on the floor. What to do with them, he didn't know, any more than he knew how to deal with the body in his room. He couldn't exactly leave with him via the front exit, and he wasn't strong enough to haul ninety pounds of dead weight out the window; not while climbing through, and for all that he'd done this day he remained unwilling to just push Vayne out, even if he followed himself.

He could flee in the night, but the innkeeper knew his name, and there weren't many Rosenkrantzes left in this world. Besides, he wouldn't, couldn't, leave the body. What if Vayne came back to it, what if he healed himself from beyond and found Roxis had left him all alone? On top of that, he'd either have to take Sulpher, leaving Vayne truly alone for the first time in his life, or abandon the cat with his dead master and no (other, he thought with a shudder) form of sustenance. He wouldn't do that to either of them.

Which left him only one solution: he stayed with the body until Vayne came back.

If Vayne came back.

If he didn't rot first.

Suddenly, he knew why the loved ones of dead men went mad.

***

So bright. The light was pure enough that it pierced him, stripped him to his elements, and he felt small and humble in his nakedness. A lost shell of a thing, and even this transcended world could not make that right alone. He wasn't meant to be. This glory, the embrace of these golden cords, was not for him; it made no sense to honour something whose nature was aberration. He needed to seek the one who completed him.

As everything was one here, he didn't have to seek far.

"Hello, Vayne." The voice was liquid to his parched soul. "I was wondering when you'd choose to die."

"You knew, all along...? You knew I'd come here?" He would have turned to track the source of the voice, but it seemed to be all around him.

The sound the Mana made was somewhere between a bitter chuckle and a sob. No-- not just a sound, but an emotion, a sharp clarity stinging painful in his heart. "You'd have to, eventually. But I knew you'd come sooner rather than later. You're nothing, without me."

To one who had been born and died human, they would have been harsh words. But Vayne knew it was true; he was only a husk, and the other him was only being honest.

He wouldn't have wanted anything less.

"But why did you let me.... Why'd you let me become human, knowing it would only turn out this way anyway?"

He knew the answer before he even heard it. "That was your wish."

"A wish to do harm, though.... Is that really what this kind of power is like? Something that would let me make such terrible mistakes?"

"You've already said it; I knew it would end like this," said the other Vayne. "You couldn't do any harm that wasn't temporary at best; and then, only to yourself, selfless creature that we are. Maybe this will have taught you something about learning to live with yourself, instead of running away from the truth."

"With myself...." The word lingered on his tongue, mocking him. "But I'm not myself any longer."

"That's true," the Mana replied. "But that's not how you wish it."

The familiar concept, so briefly understood yet, he realised now, so centrally precious to him, resounded dully in his heart. "I can't grant wishes any more."

"No," said the Mana. "But I can."

***

A rap at the door startled Roxis out of his torpor.

"Mr. Rosenkrantz? Mr. Aurelius?"

"Come in--", he said, with instinctive politeness-- no, no, damn, damn it, don't come in, gods, please! Too late....

He didn't have time to throw a blanket over Vayne. Standing up and acting now would look as suspicious as if he stayed here, shivering, the broken body at his side.

There was nowhere to run.

--Do you need my help? his Mana echoed in the back of his mind.

No, there's nothing you can do-- I don't want to hurt them... damn, damn, damn, I'm an idiot, I screwed up....

The door swung open.

Oh gods, Vayne, please. Please come back. Please come back.

***

In this close proximity to his severed self, he could feel the tug on him, vaguely. To be wished upon.... He'd barely had a chance to know the feeling, yet it felt like life to him. Life and breath and everything important. "Someone's calling you," he said softly.

"They're calling us," replied the other Vayne. "You're a part of me, small as you are, and you're one I'd like to have back."

"So... you'll come back with me?"

The Mana smiled, bright shimmers in Vayne's heart. "If that is what you wish."

***

The innkeeper passed through the door, just in time to have her vision eclipsed by the light that flooded the room. She didn't have time to see the corpse, but what she did see, when the light faded, was no less strange: the boy who'd checked in earlier, haloed in lingering golden sparkles, dressed in bloodied clothing and embracing his travelling companion on a similarly bloodstained sheet.

She blinked to make sure her sight was true, and amended her pre-prepared speech to take account of the new situation. "Mr. Rosenkrantz, Mr. Aurelius, you're overdue for tonight's fee. And I expect you'll be covering the cost of those bedsheets."

The silver-haired boy let out a cascade of laughter, and grasped hold of the bedframe with his small, pale hands. It turned to gold.

...Alchemists. Well, given that was enough to cover a year of inn stays right there, she figured she'd leave them to it.

The door closed, stirring up gold dust that glittered in the oddly-prismed light.

No Respect For Elders -- Mana Khemia fanfiction (627 words, spoilers)

2009-10-26T00:54:00.000-07:00

This is probably the saddest thing I've ever written. If you've played MK1 and/or 2 you should be able to figure out when it's set.

---

"...When I grow up, I want to be an alchemist," Claire proclaimed loudly, holding Penny's beribboned majorette staff aloft and twirling it in the air. "Like this, see-- swoosh, swoosh! And I'll do magic."

Penny snorted. "You're so freaking stupid, oh my gods. People don't be-- like, they don't even have alchemy schools any more. That sort of stuff doesn't exist."

"Oh, yeah? Well, why'd they have 'em in the past, then, if it doesn't exist?" Claire tapped the end of the staff on the ground, like she was preparing an incantation.

Penny snatched it back. "Don't do that with it, you'll get it all dirty. Anyway, it's like... oh, gods, how am I even supposed to know? I guess they just discovered it was all made up or something. Anyway, it's stupid, and you can't go to school for it. Just because you hate chemistry."

"It's not that I hate chemistry!" Claire snapped back. "I mean, yeah, Ms. Hartog is kind of a pain, but it's not like it's just that, or anything. It's just.... Oh, you wouldn't even understand! You're just dumb!" Throwing out her arms in a gesture of defeat, she turned around and stomped off. "I'm going home!" she added over her shoulder, unnecessarily. The words betrayed the tears in her voice.

"...Yeah, well, you're dumb!" Penny called after her, not caring. Great, now she'd have to wash off her baton. Well, if Claire wasn't going to hang out with her, she might as well go home and do that, before mom saw it and got mad....

"--G-gah! Sorry!", she said, flailing as whoever she'd accidentally bumped into sent her teetering off balance. She'd thrown out her arms instinctively, but it turned out not to be necessary; a thin, frail hand caught her by the elbow and, with some difficulty, guided her back to a standing position.

"Gee, thanks. Wasn't looking where I was going." She brushed off her dress, and looked up into the face of her benefactor. He was an old man, short and withered though still taller than her eight-year-old stature, with a receding shock of silver-grey hair. His ice-blue eyes were crinkled with pain, and remorse flickered in her heart. "I'm sorry... I didn't hurt you, did I?"

For a moment, he just stared at her, blankly, and she began to wonder if he was crazy. A lot of old people were crazy, especially ones who used to be so-called alchemists. She'd lost count of the times she'd overheard some toothless woman at the market rambling on about the "good old days", as if life had been better back then. You'd needed someone who'd locked themselves in a basement for three score years and ten just to make a healing potion, when nowadays anyone who'd done some half-decent scientific study could turn out medicines. Sure, they didn't shimmer like gold when they caught the light, or all that junk people talked about, but who cared? All that mattered was that you got better. It wasn't like pretty made a difference in healing someone up.

"...No, it's all right," he said eventually, in halting tones. "These days, what you say is quite true. ...I only wish that it weren't." Making an uncomfortable attempt to smile kindly at her, he continued off in the opposite direction, the way Claire had gone.

"...Wow, that's not even what I asked," she muttered, shaking her head as he doddered off. "Really was just another crazy old guy."

I only wish that it weren't. Was everyone she was going to run into today really this dumb? You'd have thought an old man would know better. "Yeah, well, if wishes were horses," she said to herself. As if alchemy, or wishing, had ever got anybody anywhere.

---

Vayne as an old human man is so horribly horribly sad. D: This image just got into my head and wouldn't go away....

Too Good To Live, Too Young To Happy (Mana Khemia spoilers)

2009-10-24T08:30:00.000-07:00

(I couldn't resist the subject line; Engrish.com is love. Someone clearly got derailed somewhere along the line there. And I love that the word Japan always sticks in place of anything when they don't know what to say is "happy". It's like their "smurf". And I think that's utterly adorable... but I digress.)

So I wound up engaged in longdiscussion over on lj-mana_khemia_fic about the philosophical and ethical issues that arise from a being who can grant any wish, and one person brought up the TVTrope Too Good For This Sinful Earth in association with Vayne. Basically, if you don't want to subject yourself to a productivity downgrade, this trope covers cases where a being is seen (by the authors, by the other people in their world, or both) as being too good, pure, and/or innocent to live in the world without being corrupted by its flawed nature. It's often accompanied by some kind of power that the being has which, due to their goodness and eagerness to help, could easily be turned to corrupt ends. Thus, it's a statement that anything which transcends a certain threshold of beauty is too dangerous/too vulnerable to continue existing, and must be destroyed for its own sake and possibly the sake of the world.

There are problems with this that involve Vayne specifically-- namely that, as a being who can grant any wish including his own, he could wish for world peace, plenty and understanding, or simply transcendence of everything into an enlightened state, before anyone gets to him. But I think there are also problems with it in the greater philisophical sense.

One, as I mentioned, it seems like essentially this is saying that any being who meets a particular threshold of goodness and positivity needs to be struck from the world. Doesn't this, therefore, continue to ensure that the world stays a place that only contains lesser beings, with not much good in their hearts, and thus remains a place that people will judge as unfit for greater beings-- thus keeping people from ever improving? Simply put, if you destroy anything that's "too good for the world", the world may never be able to reach a level where most beings are that good, because it will lack the influence of the beings best positioned to help it grow. (Note that I don't quite agree with this because I think the world will continue to evolve no matter what, but it seems at best perverse to kill off the very best of your society and force it to advance the slow way. If every time anything is born which has a significant chance of advancing society by large leaps, you insist that it dies, then you're resigning yourself to unnecessary struggle and suffering. And there's no reason to do things the hard way-- that's just a conceit people invent because we have to do things the hard way and we like to think something good is gained from it. Something good often is, but there's a lot gained from doing things the easy way, too.)

Not only are you keeping the world from improving this way, but by saying something is "too good for this world", you're also making a statement that the being can't or shouldn't improve the world. It's not just a practical case of "this will hamper the world's ability to grow"; it's also a philosophical position which argues that the world is a sick place and cannot or should not be healed, since every time a creature came into it with powers for good that could help people, you'd argue they should just be sent packing to a better place to let us wallow in our misery, since we're just helpless. What of the possibility that such creatures were sent to us to help us and know what they're doing? And even if not, how pessimistic is the idea that that help shouldn't be given a chance? That's not just looking every gift horse that comes your way in the mouth, it's kicking it in the teeth.

Which leads me to my next point: aside from all else, I think it's incredibly immoral to murder something beautiful and transcended. A life is a life and lives should be valued no matter how humble or cruel, but as I said in a post a while ago about Firefly's witch-burning episode, I think there's a particular evil-- and it's very rare that I actually think the word evil is warranted-- to trying to get rid of something specifically because it is good, pure, magical, etc. I think that the only way the word "evil" can possibly make sense is if it's defined as "something which directly defeats or destroys good"; I don't think people can be evil, but I think something which attacks and eats away at the existence of goodness in the world is an evil, and in that sense I think the removal of high and beautiful creatures from the world, with the express intent to get rid of that good, is an evil. Even if you say it's "because the world cannot bear it", if you've admitted the being is pure, noble and good and that that's your reason for trying to kill it, I would call that an evil act.

Even if you don't necessarily agree with the word choice, I'd say it's a horribly immoral act, to destroy beauty and wonder because it is beauty and wonder. It's like going out and murdering kingfishers because they're pretty, or something. Maybe it's because you think the beauty of them will inspire people to idle daydreaming and not enough work, maybe you're just a card-carrying Saturday morning cartoon villain who wants the world to lack colour, maybe you think it will force people to do something about the state of the world-- whatever your motivation ultimately, if part of it is that you think there needs to be less beauty in the world for any reason, I am against you to the end. That can't be justified, in my opinion. It's one of those things I feel particularly strongly about.

So yes, that makes it tragic if Vayne is killed for being what he is-- and yes, a good tragic story can be beautiful in its own way. But I think to say that "it's tragic, but there's nothing that can be done about it because the world forces us to bring these tragedies about" is a way of looking at things that, itself, is just as immoral and problematic; in that it denies the possibility of goodness, of moving beyond what we are, and keeps us from trying to look at ways to right things.

When confronted with a being like Vayne, shouldn't we, in our position as beings whose nature is always to strive for improvement, be looking at him and considering how his potential could help us, rather than simply saying he's too good to live?

Stigmata (Warning: Spoilers for Mana Khemia)

2009-10-19T23:31:00.000-07:00

...I have mentioned that STIGMATA from Mana Khemia is a really awfully sad song, right? I thought it was sad the first time I heard it, but I think that running in the recent MK RP I've been in has given me a whole new awareness of just how awful the game's ending is.

It's one thing to see it, coming into it already knowing there's going to be a sad ending, and going, "oh, yes, another one of [WARNING: TVTropes link ahead!] those". It's another to actually be roleplaying this delightful, sensitive, radiant, and wholly alien being coming tentatively into the full wonder of his powers, gradually becoming more confident as he embraces them more and more, everyone around him finding new growth and new understanding in their lives as they spend time around him... who, just because he's that full of love, randomly walks up to a turtle on ic_secrets, who isn't part of his own canon and only exists to pass silent-but-implied commentary on other people's posts, and grants him a wish to be less clumsy... and then think about how the game actually ended, with him wishing to be stripped of everything that actually made him a decent magical being as opposed to a confused and doormatty human.

The thing about STIGMATA is it recognises this, or at least when read in one way. It's the final battle song, and it's also a beautiful song vocally, and it seems to be a lament by Vayne's Mana self (who is actually a character, and expresses disapproval about all of this) for what Vayne has given up.

Music here, lyrics below. AFAIK, there's no single site that compiles the romaji lyrics (for singing) and the translated lyrics (for understanding) into one file, so here you go, a tiny service to fandom. Thanks to Lazy and to Chudah's Corner for the translation and romaji respectively.

Tojikaketa hitomi ni itsuwari wo utsushite
In my closed eyes, I could see nothing but falsehood

Karamiau sadame wa ayamachi ni yakarete
My destiny is entangled in mistakes

Me wo fuse inori wo sasageru fukaku aoki yami no naka de
I close my eyes and offer my praying to the deep blue darkness

Hizamazuku mono no nigirishimeta te ni kizamareta shirushi no you ni
Oh, the frozen eye that belongs to the God of Destruction, thirsted for tears of blood

Magakami no itetsuku hitomi yo chi no namida wa kawaku kotonaku
Covering the night, shrouding the sun, with thy gigantic jaw

Yo wo daki hi wo ooi hirakareta hatenaki agito
I kneel down, holding my hands tight as the wounds of stigmata engrave upon my body

Hirugaeru osanaki haoto yo fuki yuku kaze no na wo tsutsunde
Oh, the sound of the fluttering tiny wings, they still embrace the name of the blowing wind

Kanata eto hakobi yuku todokanu inori to shitte mo
Even though they know their prayers would never reach the faraway places

Soredemo hito wa uta darou aragau inochi no sakebi wo
Nevertheless, people still sing their screaming of chaotic fates

matataita yaiba no kiseki yo chi no ishi wa taeru kotonaku
Oh, the flickering locus of blades, testament of blood is already dead

Yo wo egaki hi wo torae sashitsuranuku kaki no hi no ya
Drawing the night, seizing the sun, with those arrows of flame that pierce through everything

Iro aseta furuki koto no ha yo sugisarishi toki wo kuri tata ne
Oh, the ancient words of fading colors, they still turn the cogs of passing time

Tokoshie ni tsutae yuku kanawanu chigiri to natte mo
Even though the promises they want to express for eternity would never be granted

Soredemo hito wa egaku darou tsuienu inochi no homura wo
Nevertheless, people still sketch the flame of their undying lives

Oh, and if you need a pick-me-up after all that, have a lovely comic. Yes, it's an oldie, but it's a goodie; like Ovaltine at bedtime, sometimes you just need to go back to those staples.

Learning Your Wishes -- Mana Khemia fanfiction (Roxis/Vayne, 413 words, sex, spoilers)

2009-10-18T23:51:00.000-07:00

Just a random little ficbit. Yes, this is yaoi, so proceed at your own risk.

Learning to make love to Vayne wasn't quite like anything Roxis could have predicted.

It wasn't that he didn't respond to Roxis. For the most part, he responded like any ordinary boy, or at least like the stories said and Roxis would've; he whimpered and writhed most delightfully, he rocked his hips into Roxis' touch, the words please and more tumbling from marble-carved lips.

The difference was in what he responded to.

He hadn't noticed it at first; his thrilled explorations of Vayne had coincided well enough with teasing touches and nibbles to all the right spots that the reactions seemed to fit. But from time to time, he would find himself just leaning back to admire the slender vision before him, letting his mind run wild with thoughts, and note that Vayne's sudden cries and shivers were timed perfectly to the high points of his fantasies.

It could have been just a fluke, so he tested the theory more rigorously. It was true. Even without the binding of will he'd put on him that time, what made Vayne feel best of all was whatever Roxis wanted.

When that realisation had dawned, he'd come right then and there, collapsing on top of Vayne; the erratic shudders that ensued beneath him, every one an unspoken command from Roxis' own body, had only made the moment sweeter.

He lay there, in the bliss of the afterglow, and allowed himself to just dwell on that. The possibilities stretched out before him like a lazy summer morning, rich and full of untapped potential. He could make Vayne come crying his name from a room away, from a continent away most likely. If he wanted Vayne to feel pleasure, he need only give himself pleasure.

A chuckle from deep inside his skull made one eyebrow twitch. What?

--Well... you do realise that means that if you want to torment him....

Roxis groaned. ...Thank you, dear soul. You always know how to make the best of a situation.

--Hohoho. Any time....

Her presence receded, the light of their mind-bond fading to a few soft glimmers in his sight that, he eventually realised, were just the sunlight catching in Vayne's hair. Still lost in the memory of bliss, his lips slightly parted and swollen from kisses, the room's evening glow stroking the soft curves of his face, he looked both angelic and fragile, thoroughly breakable.

A little self-torment, he was beginning to ponder, might just manage to be worth it.

Quicksilver -- Mana Khemia fanfiction (3006 words, spoilers)

2009-10-04T14:44:00.000-07:00

Heavily inspired by the song of the same name by the Cruxshadows, which I thought would, if Mana Khemia had ended as it should have ended, make a great song for Vayne. Also possibly very strange. Or not. I don't know.

WRITTEN ON A PLANE YOU GUYS so I have no idea if it's good or not. Also, makes no sense unless you've seen the end of Mana Khemia, srsly. Obviously contains ~~nuts~~ spoilers.

Quicksilver
the future belongs to the brave

You are not wrong, you who believe
Your will defines your destiny
But if you act in selfish fear
The truth means nothing....

You are not wrong, if you perceive
The message veiled in mystery
But if we bury what we dream
We're left with what remains....

***

"So, this....

This is what I am."

Vayne stretched his limbs; near-imperceptibly, but Isolde could see him tense, then relax, like one awakened from sleep. It was as if he was stretching out his soul, teaching it again to fully occupy a body it had forgotten.

"This... is what you hoped to banish from this world."

She kept her eyes on him as she spoke, though unease flickered at her heart, serpent-tongued. "Now do you understand? The purpose of my actions... the reason I can't allow you...." She paused, watching his expression slowly morph; from that of the conflicted, wild-eyed boy who had stood there a moment ago, to something that now carried itself with unearthly repose and grace, its icy eyes calmly watching hers. Devoid of malice as it was, she still felt her gaze waver under that stare. "Knowing yourself, knowing this power... you must appreciate it. The extent of what you can do. Why you mustn't stay in this world."

"No, Isolde," said Vayne, with a lazy blink. It left, for a moment, a blurry film over his eyes. "I don't think I do."

Cold fear eclipsed her. Gods, save me.... It's too late.

"I do... have power." The words came slow and easy. "And now, I know so much more about myself. You're not wrong, when you say that. But when you say I must see what it means.... it seems that you're the one who doesn't understand me." He smiled softly, sadly; she could not tell if he was trying to dampen the impact of his words in prudence, or if he truly felt compassion.

"It's true, I was created by Theofratus' hand. My father...." She tensed at Vayne's recollection. "But from the same source from which all Mana come. That source of goodness and truth that, ultimately, drives alchemy. I mean no harm...."

"You might not mean it!" she hissed, drawing back. "But how can you know what you'll do? In the heat of the moment, in the midst of fear...."

"I'm not afraid, Isolde." He took a step towards her.

"Get back!"

"You're the one who's afraid." He moved with feline grace, sliding through the space between like oil on water; his form had not changed, not significantly, but she saw the new motions that worked under his skin. Light began to halo him, glittering off the tips of his hair. His features were softened through the aura.

"Stay back, or I'll pierce your heart!"

The smile never left his face. "You know you can't do that."

She saw no mockery in that smile, no human, vain defiance. He smiled because the simple calmness of truth cocooned him. It was as he'd said. He had no reason to fear.

She allowed, for the first time, her eyes to fall from his.

"So... this is how it ends," she said.

"Ends?"

"Theofratus' son-- his creation," she corrected herself. "To take my life, as you took his." Breathing in strength, she returned her gaze to him. "I can't win against you, but it won't keep me from fighting!"

She felt a hand touch against her shoulder. "Ah!"

"Why pick a fight you can't win?" There was sadness in his features, now. "I'm asking sincerely. I really want to know, Isolde-sensei." The slip back into the more deferent form of address reminded her of the old Vayne; the two mingled in his expression, not struggling for dominance but blending into one seamless entity. The two sides of himself were finding peace with each other. "Hey... can you hear me?"

Snapped back to reality, she tried to regain her train of thought. "...Because...!" Fire rose in her voice. "Because it's all I can do, any more! I won't let you simply destroy it all... I can't let you... but there's nothing...."

Vayne shook his head. "There's no need to disgrace yourself in front of me. I don't want that.... Let's just go back."

"No... if I just let you live, I'm already disgraced.... And his name...."

"Even if you could destroy me, then my father would never have a chance to prove himself. I want to live... in a way that proves to the world.... That he didn't do anything evil."

For a handful of moments, their own breathing was all that resounded in the still air around them, as the other's words settled on their minds. Vayne, his pale hand still resting on Isolde's shoulder, filled the chamber with the light of his presence: a fuzzy glow, white and pulsing, that caught upon dust motes and lit them up, for brief instants, with brilliant flares of colour.

"This place feels so old...." He took a ragged breath, not befitting his youthful form; it was as if he tasted the ancient nature of the air and allowed it to live within him. "I never noticed these things before.... Before I knew I was a Mana, I never cared that much about anything. I did whatever was asked of me without complaint, but I didn't know why. Now... that reason...." He swept a hand through the air, stirring up the little dust-glimmers, a childlike serenity crossing his face at the dancing display. "It doesn't really change anything, but at least I know I have a purpose. Now, I know why I act, why I feel these things.... And knowing that... knowing this power, feeling the whole world through it, echoing in my heart like lightning, like life.... I couldn't possibly...."

A tear streaked down his face, alive and shimmering in the light.

"I couldn't possibly do any harm to this world, knowing that. Do you understand?"

"How can you say such things...." Her own voice was thick with tears.

"I don't know...." He was crying, but not the way she was. Even through his sobs, she could hear the smile warm in his words. "I don't know, Isolde-sensei. You tell me. You're the teacher.... I don't really know anything. I just exist.... But... I want to help this world." He paused for a moment, a new thought arising in his mind. "Don't you?"

"...What? Of course...."

"Then why.... Alchemy can help this world. And you teach because you want to bring the world alchemy, right? But this isn't.... Destroying a Mana.... Running from the truth in fear.... Isn't it your wish that I should grow, to know this light, the way alchemy meant for us to? Have you forgotten what it means to pursue this?"

"...No, Vayne.... You're right. I used to believe... that alchemy's powers could.... But now, seeing all it has wrought...."

"Then why do you still teach?" His voice was flecked with genuine surprise.

She laughed, bitterly, through her tears. "Maybe I don't know. Maybe I don't know why I do or say such things. No... No, I suppose it's... because if students will learn this... it's my duty to make sure they don't use it for the things he used it for... to make sure they don't make mistakes. Such a dangerous power...." Another wry laugh escaped her. "How can I be the only one who sees it?"

"Maybe because it isn't true."

"Of course you'd say that."

"Look at me."

His words reached her ears, and she realised she'd been staring at the ground again, watching the ripples his light picked out in the movement of dust through the air. "It is an ancient place," she whispered. "You're right...."

"Don't turn away. Look at me...."

She looked up, her head as heavy as it had ever felt. It was a titanic effort to make herself regard his form, to meet his face, now, all those words echoing in her mind. Who knew what she might see there, what might turn itself upon her. Who knew....

His eyes caught hers, benevolent, placid. She could feel the wish-power that swelled and tumbled within him, but his expression betrayed nothing of the turmoil. It radiated. Light streamed out from him in waves that felt almost casual, thick tendrils of power that curled and undulated like a cat's tail; they spread from his back, from his arms, like long and flexible wings. She remembered him, suspended in light, lifting himself to the heavens by his own power. Those streams of light didn't look like they could bear a body aloft, but she was confident they bore his weight, when he willed it.

"Be brave, Isolde-sensei," he said, and the words seemed to come from everywhere around. "Look upon me with the eyes with which you saw your own Mana, when you pacted.... So long ago, now. So long ago, dear Isolde. But remember. Remember. We all remember...."

The walls around seemed to echo with them, the voices of a choir. And for a single moment, her fear dissolved, and the world resolved before her senses, crystal-clear.

"You're...." She swallowed. Why say it? But it was the only thing left to say. Everything she'd fought for felt so hollow in this light, and now the only words left.... "You're beautiful, Vayne."

"Mm." It wasn't an arrogant agreement; merely an acknowledgement of truth.

"...So what now?" Her eyes stung with tears again, partly from holding them open; there was nothing to do but stare at him.

Vayne gave a little mental shrug, and somehow she felt it, rippling through the light around. "I don't know. What did you want to do? ...I meant that seriously, by the way. I'm not really good at knowing what to do, when people don't tell me." He rubbed the back of his head, the first truly human gesture she'd seen from him in a while, and she barked out a laugh.

"Heh. Never change."

"I already have," he said, simply, sadly. Sorrow for her, not for himself.

"...I don't know either. I don't know what to do now. I just...." The room around her thrummed like a heartbeat, alive with power. "...I just wish that... you would... that you could...."

Vayne hmmmed, a sing-song tone that echoed his beatific smile. "That I would what? Go away? Not exist?" It was a playful taunting, a joke he hoped to share with her, a joyous dismissal of old fears. Her wish already resounded in his heart; intoxicated on his newfound powers, he couldn't help but feel it.

...that someone would understand me....

His senses bathed in the fire of her request, eyes narrowed to catlike slits, he let his hand fall to cover her heart. Even through her robe, it felt like a molten brand.

"Of course.... Anything you wish."

If she'd ever considered, idly, before, what it would be like to have her thoughts and feelings read, she would have thought it would have felt like something. It didn't, really. It was him doing the feeling, not her; she simply watched the emotions flicker over his face, his expression shifting like quicksilver. That one person could contain such multitudes... but then, she remembered, she contained them too. Just never all at once, like that... and now, the same things that she contained, he did too....

---

Sulpher.... Is it okay?

Meow.... (I don't see why not.)

But you're my-- I mean, I'm your Mana... I never want to leave you.

Meow. (You'll always be my Mana. We can all stay together.)

If it really works like that....

Myaaan. (You can wish for it to be however you want, remember? ...I don't mind, in any case. She did save my life.)

---

Sulpher and Vayne, talking in her mind...? The words came to her only blurrily, a watery echo she had to struggle to make out. And the more she fought to understand, the more it did feel like something. Like descending into the darkness. Where was Vayne? The world was so... the light so faint....

Isolde?

Vayne? What is it? Not now....

Isolde, hold on....

***

Stark whiteness filled her hazy vision. Not the pleasant, numbing glow of Mana-light, this, but an all-too-familiar banal huelessness. The infirmary.... Ugh, no. How did I get here? Vayne. Vayne was.... Damn, did he trick me...?

The thought flickered across her mind, but made no impact, like an old memory; a sudden flash of pain, followed by the ease of knowing that truth was in the past. Her heart felt calm, all her surface thoughts refusing to stir its placid surface. Buoyed on the recognition of that, she kept herself from sitting bolt upright and scanning her surroundings, and simply let herself lie, feeling out her body for injuries and the wider room for presences with a detached curiosity.

She didn't seem hurt, and the sounds and sentiments of the infirmary were much as they ever were. Melanie was behind the curtain, preparing some horrible concoction no doubt that would harm more than it healed. I'm not even sick. Gods only know if I can convince her of that, though.... And closer, another presence... no, two... no, one... or was it just her imagination? She blinked to clear her vision, and surveyed the room with her eyes.

"Meow."

Ice-blue eyes met hers, framed by a shock of silver-white hair. Two over-large feline ears protruded from it, white feathery fur spilling out from the openings. She had to admit it looked quite grand.

She wasn't about to say that, though.

"I didn't know you possessed a sense of humour. And what's with all that? You look like Nikki."

"Ahaha, you don't like it?" Vayne rubbed a clawed hand through his hair. "I can change it...."

Isolde waved her hand dismissively, though internally she was blushing at the show of deference. "Don't bother. ...I am fond of cats, anyway."

A smaller black form hopped up onto the bed. "Always reassuring to hear," Sulpher mewed.

"...And I'm going to regret saying that, having two of them talking in my head."

"You're happy, though, right, Isolde-sensei?" said Vayne.

"Sensei...." she mused. "Is it really fitting for you to be calling me that any more, I wonder...."

"Huh?"

"Never mind. As for happy... it's been a long time since I ever was. I really don't know."

"...Oh."

"But I do feel... hn. It's been a long time since I felt this way, too. Maybe not since my first Mana.... The burden I carried inside... does feel lighter, somewhat."

"That's good...." Vayne smiled and took a place next to Sulpher, curling up into an effortless ball that looked like it should have been uncomfortable with still mostly-humanoid limbs.

"And maybe, with time, with this bond.... Maybe what you did will stop mattering so much to me. I don't want to promise anything, you understand. But if you're to be my Mana, it wouldn't make sense for me to... and I really don't...." She reached a hand out to absently scratch at his ear. "I think... that now... it's impossible for me to truly hate you, Vayne."

"...A happy ending, then?" offered Sulpher.

Vayne laughed nervously. "...Well, if we can get out of this place without Melanie trying to pour some weird gunk into us...."

Isolde rolled her eyes. "...My thoughts exactly."

"And goodness knows what I'm supposed to say to my workshopmates...."

"Yes, it's a good thing we're graduating," said Sulpher. "Although I suppose we won't be leaving the school now. Not that I mind... I rather like this place."

Vayne nodded. "I go where you and she go. Just don't go in two different directions. ...Ah, but! Speaking of graduation!"

"What about it?" Sulpher asked.

"Well, if I'm the Mana, and Sulpher's the pacted.... Shouldn't he technically be the one who graduates?"

"That's assuming I let you graduate," said Isolde.

"W-wait, what? But what did I...."

"You did put me in the infirmary."

"I wasn't responsible," said Sulpher. "I insist on getting my degree."

Isolde laughed lightly. "You two are good humour," she said. "But, Vayne, in all seriousness.... I do believe that if anyone deserves to graduate, it's you. You embraced the transcendence that alchemy is made for, and I.... Even I had let that knowledge become clouded, in my own fear. You showed me something I needed to remember, and... well.... Well done."

"Thank you, sensei," Vayne said, ducking his head a little.

"Please. There's no need to call me that now."

"She really can't make up her mind, can she?" said Sulpher.

***

And the strange laughter of one cat, one human, and something both yet neither echoed through the building, until Vayne's friends were eventually drawn; and there was much to explain, and even after all was said, and the jokes had been made, Vayne felt like he'd never hear the end of it.

Except he would, in short order. They were all graduating, and he was staying here, or leaving; whatever Isolde chose. It was an unspoken understanding: he and Sulpher didn't have plans, after all, and Sulpher had always gone wherever Vayne had gone. He'd never really had any direction in life, never known where he was going or what he was doing. But as a Mana, he felt content not going much of anywhere of his own accord.

Being with his pact-mates, helping their wishes come true....

That seemed like a peaceful kind of life, to him.

So that was the way it would be.

***

Theofratus.... I had truly underestimated you.

I still don't know why you longed for death. Alchemy is transcendence... I'm remembering that again, now. But was there really nothing more you could have done with your time and knowledge? Was that really the best way to leave this world, in desperation and in fear, rather than on the wings of eagles? If only you'd stayed with Vayne.... If only that hadn't been your first wish.... Maybe you'd have found the peace I'm beginning to see.

I don't know why you left. But the gift you left behind.... Through him, your son, your creation, I'm learning that your leaving wasn't the end of my life. And if you really did have to go, I'm thankful that you still gave me that.

I wish we could have been a family. But in your absence, I'll be all I can for him.

And if there is anything left of your heart that cares... know that he is everything, to me.

I must move on with my life. I'll commit this letter to the fire, and hope it is the last time I dwell on this sorrow. Rising on the updrafts, like the flames that burned your body, I'll wish that it reaches you.

With love,
Isolde.

Why Atelier Iris 3 is actually a very alchemical story.

2009-09-20T13:40:00.001-07:00

[Huge swathes of spoilers for the end(s) of AI3.]

In a sense, though it's not immediately apparent from the superficial story, Atelier Iris 3 could be said to be a game about how alchemy is disrespected and ignored in the world, and how it comes to be respected again.

The first statement is implicit in the plot; the second is not. But if we recognise that, after Iris's sacrifice, people are going to put together "Iris was an alchemist, and we disparaged her for it" and "Iris was the only one of us who could make things right" and realise that, at the very least, alchemists are people who are capable of turning away fundamental negative forces and tendencies that threaten to destroy us as intelligent beings-- as opposed to being people who do strange and disreputable things, who adhere to philosophies and practices that are outmoded or even dangerous, who generally have nothing to offer the world and may even do harm to it-- it becomes obvious how, by the end of the story, the opinions of the townspeople of Zey Meruze regarding alchemy might change.

Uroboros' physical manifestation, in this sense, could be taken as a symptom rather than a cause. "Uroboros" is really no more and no less than "the stagnation of the people's development". People in Zey Meruze have let themselves abandon ways of life that helped and advanced people, out of fear, apathy and inertia ("our lives are fine as they are! Why do we need this weird alchemy stuff causing upheavals?"). They've come to prefer to live mundane lives that don't ask anything much of them on a spiritual and philosophical front: alchemy, and by this I mean the discipline that we know as alchemy in this world, challenges the soul and the psyche and asks the practitioner to refine themselves, which forces them in the short term to go through transformations and confront realisations that might be uncomfortable in order to ultimately become better people. When people see short-term suffering and struggle, and the benefits lie beyond that, in the future, they tend to shy away. Their lives are chugging along well enough. Why put yourself through suffering to be even better? Aren't things okay now?

But that tendency to settle for "okayness", ultimately, creates more suffering in the world; because as long as things are just "okay", they aren't good, they aren't perfect, they aren't refined, and we experience suffering. Accepting "okayness" means accepting a certain level of suffering, and not wanting to move beyond okayness implies that we will never move beyond suffering. The only way to permanently move beyond suffering, spiritually speaking, is to advance ourselves to the point of transcendence-- which requires some short-term sacrifices which at the time feel more acutely uncomfortable, yet are preferable because they are temporary.

The tendency to settle for "okayness", to let the cycle of life go around and around without moving forward, is synonymous with Uroboros: the snake eating its own tail, the wheel of life and death and reincarnation that Buddhist practice exhorts that we move beyond. And so the people of Zey Meruze, in their denial of alchemy, their denial of spiritual striving and insistence upon living simple, unchallenging lives, are in a sense Uroboros.

Uroboros appears physically so that it can be defeated, because the world has come to such a crisis point. When Iris defeats Uroboros in the physical, she also defeats Uroboros in people's hearts. Her actions-- the fact of an alchemist, whose ways they disdained, saving the world through her wisdom and selflessness, which they doubted she possessed-- inspire them to the understanding that alchemy isn't a mindless practice but is in fact the only thing that can save them from Uroboros/stagnation.

And here's the interesting part, and the part that is really very alchemical: she had to defeat the physical Uroboros to inspire the philosophical change in people's hearts, but she cannot truly defeat Uroboros until she has inspired that change, because if the change is not present in people's hearts, then all you've done is defeat some superficial manifestation that wasn't really causing the problem. It's the classical end-boss quote from many RPGs: "as long as darkness remains in people's hearts, I will return someday". What's little-understood is that it's also an alchemical truth. In alchemy, you change physical materials in order to change the spiritual self, but it's spiritual growth and purity of the self that allows you to be subtle enough to effect the physical change. Thus they really occur simultaneously. In changing one you change the other.

So I like to think of Atelier Iris 3 as being set, at the beginning, in a world where alchemy is in decline, and through that decline, Uroboros becomes strong, and a hero-- someone with courage, power and wisdom, though on more refined and spiritual levels than most RPG heroes usually have it-- rises up to physically defeat Uroboros, in doing so showing the people the value of alchemy and truly putting Uroboros to rest.

What's nice about this interpretation, too, is that it provides the necessary characteristic of growth to the story-- in a classical story, a conflict arises, it is resolved, and by its resolution things are made not just as good as they were before but better. Without this interpretation, AI3 lacks the "better"-- the danger is averted, but things just go back to the way they were. If we say that people learnt something about alchemy from this, there's growth; the conflict was worthwhile not just because it restored things to a status quo but because something was gained, and that makes the story really feel fulfilling.

And best of all, that is also in accordance with the rules of alchemy: a trial, a suffering, is undergone, something is deconstructed, in order to bring that thing into a more refined state than before, to purify it, to get rid of something unnecessary through the struggle. Fairy tales are good alchemical metaphors, and I think, viewed in the proper light, Atelier Iris 3 actually makes a pretty good fairy tale. Is it original? Not especially-- most fairy tales aren't. But it tells a story people need to hear, and what's nice about it is that it specifically associates this story with alchemy, which allows a careful viewer to draw out more meaning and truth from it than they otherwise would.

The One Who Called Himself The Morning Star -- Atelier Iris 3 fanfiction (1,369 words, spoilers)

2009-07-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

A ficbit that I've been wanting to get down for a while. It's not as coherent as I'd like it to be; it's basically just some drifting snapshots of a train of thought.

---

Blades.

Blades of light-- no, metal, but reflecting the light, like steel talons polished until they blazed under the sun, blazed with a light that seemed almost to surge forth from within. The wings of a warrior angel, each one honed to the truest edge, rainbow light coruscating off the tiny imperfections in the surface: the scores and scratches where other blades had scraped along the metal's finer surface, where acid blood had tarnished the otherwise flawless finish. An impeccable figure of glory, yet carrying a subtler message to her eyes and mind: there is beauty to be found in weakness, behind blemishes and downfalls, in those things which we would otherwise cast aside.

You're right, Iris thought. There isbeauty in weakness. In things not fitting the pattern, and going their own way....

But Fanatos, you are not the only Mana.... Your ways are not the only ways.... And there are some patterns... that were never meant to be distorted.

Even you must feel that, now, joined like this....

She watched the motions of the brilliant armour, guided by Edge, the human who now wore its form. The last few times they'd fought, she'd barely been able to stop staring at it; it seemed to hold a puzzle for her, a visual illusion that set her perception on edge, trying to unravel it, trying to make the parts make sense. What part of this picture doesn't belong? The disparity, the conflict, was giving her motion sickness, but her eyes couldn't stop being drawn.

With time, her watching had paid off, the pieces falling into place. It wasn't Fanatos, the dark Mana, who was in some way incomplete; even if humans had dubbed her "the Mana of Evil", there was nothing in this picture that was truly cruel. She reflected that which people did not normally desire, fallings, failings, the tribulations of life; but only because even suffering could know beauty, even the darkest things could retain some component of grace. She was that flicker of grace in all evil things, the light of wonder within all that seemed hopeless.

In the few battles they'd fought together, she'd become certain that, as with any Mana, she could not dislike Fanatos. Indeed, she'd learnt a lot from just studying the shining creature. Even without words, there was a certain communication that went on between an alchemist and her pact-bonded.

She only wished the Mana could have that communication with Edge. That either of them could.

The armour of Fanatos dwarfed him, and within it, his hard, brutal motions seemed ill-fitting to the grace of the great angelic construct. It was like watching a play put on by untrained actors, who thundered and blustered through lines that deserved to be carefully weighted, even-handed. She wasn't much of a critic, but she knew when the actors were getting it right, because she'd forget they were acting and just lose herself in the story's ebbs and flows. But the sight of Edge, encased within Fanatos' mighty wings, kept jarring her, drawing her attention to the flaws in the pattern.

And each time, like a reader woken from the thrall of a story, she found herself feeling, suddenly, very alone.

~~~

They talked about it in her workshop-- not her house, really, more a workshop with a bed, the trappings and trimmings of alchemical labours spilling out into every available nook of the space. She liked it that way, a living space that felt like it was honoured by her craft. Edge thought she should clean up more often.

"So... what's it like, Edge, using the Blades?"

He looked up at her from his sword polishing, his hair frazzled and smelling of ozone and ash, damp sootish strands hanging over his eyes. He looked at ease, here, within the aftermath of battle, more at ease than he had out there dancing with the Mana. Iris didn't know quite what she thought of that. "It seems like it's working so far, I guess. I mean, we're getting through our quests a lot more quickly now." His eyes flickered up to hers, taking in her seeking gaze, seeming to grind over in his mind, for a moment, what she might be asking. "...Thanks. I wouldn't be able to do that if it weren't for you."

"No, that's not what I meant. Getting to join with something like that, I.... Doesn't it feel different? To what you're used to?"

"Yeah, I guess, now that you mention it." He gave the blade of his weapon a pass with the whetstone, the harsh ringing noise seeming to punctuate his words. "It does feel different." Another stroke, another metallic hum. "I'm stronger. Lighter. There's more I can do. Iris, why are you staring at me?"

"Stronger...." She turned the word over on her tongue, not sure what she expected to find. It felt hollow. "But doesn't it... mean anything to you?"

"Mean anything? Should it mean something?" His words rung with the cold scraping of stone on metal.

Yes, she thought, it should mean something, but I can't explain what. There are so many things that mean so much, but I can't begin to have the words for you. Your ears only hear the ringing of that sword... I'm not strong enough to drown it out.

She touched her hand to her chest, unconsciously, the energy fields around her fingers mingling with the tight, tangled knot that clenched at her lifeforce. Do you know what it means to speak with the Mana? she asked of its creator. Do you know what it is to live the way I do, to make alchemy your blood and breath? Do you understand the art you claim to know? Do you?

Does anyone, any more? Anyone but me?

She knew that even if she got an answer, it wouldn't be one she could trust. But for a simple "yes", she thought, she would run a thousand miles across the land, into the maw of her own grave.

~~~

She didn't ask Edge to leave the workshop, that night, but her silence eventually drove him out; knowing, perhaps, that she longed for things he could not be and could not even know. She watched him for a time through her window: a silhouette sitting on the steps, his back to her house, the moonlight glinting dully off his sword. Like he was a wraith, half-real, only the sword alive.

She turned over in her bed, letting the more comforting scene of soft candlelight reflecting off wooden furnishings drive out the spectral images. Had they really grown so far apart that these were the thoughts that filled her mind, now, when she thought of him? A ghost of a person, unable to see the truth she lived? It wasn't that she hated Edge; she didn't hate anyone, not even the man who had cursed her to die-- especially not-- not if--, she started to think, and pushed the thoughts out before they could form-- and he'd done so much for her, been there for her through so many hard times. She was just... disappointed, she supposed, that he hadn't grown along the same path as she, hadn't even found a vantage point from which he could understand anything that made her live.

Anything she'd live for.

Anything she'd die for.

She took one of the books from her bedside stand. Thick with allegory and metaphor, with universal truths gilt in ancient symbolism, it took her on a ride from life through death, and beyond-- against a backdrop of falling angels and morning stars, rapture and redemption, the preciousness of transformation. Her head spun with the heaviness of it, and how it made her think, all at once, of her own fragile position with regards to life, and the burnished, flame-ringed outline of Fanatos's armour cloak, and the shadow-image of one who could wear it and honour it-- an eyeblink's image, one she would not let herself hold onto, replaced with formless what-ifs and a hollow sense of longing.

With the tome as her pillow, she drifted into sleep, and there dreamt of a rising star that eclipsed her very soul, and burnt all her life away.

A Prayer for Peace(?)

2009-07-22T19:12:00.001-07:00

Presented without comment.

What makes me stranger doesn't kill me.

2009-07-22T10:33:00.000-07:00

A little less of a fannish post, today, and a little more of a post on life in general.

So, as some of you may know, I keep up with the awesome Slacktivist blog. I'm solely a lurker, but I've learnt a lot from the discussions that pan out in that blog-- not just on religious fundamentalism, which is the main topic of its popular Left Behind Friday posts, but on everything from Norse gods to werewolf myths to the politics of job loss in the newspaper industry. It's a fascinating forum full of thoughtful minds, and even when I don't agree with them, I feel my understanding of the situation broadened by seeing people hash it out, and gain a better appreciation for both sides. Oh, and it's often pretty funny, too.

But I'm going to have to stop reading for a few days, because the current thread is bugging me too much. It's nothing big or drastic: just an ongoing discussion, which is dragging out way too long for my comfort, in which a lot of the stereotypes about obsessed fans/nerds/"otaku" are being used to justify derision and mockery towards people who lean towards the geekier side of the social spectrum.

The thing that's grating on me, though, isn't the usual bugbear that people have with this kind of rhetoric: "well, my friends and I aren't like that, so stop tarring us with the same brush as all those losers who can't hack the real world". That's the main party line that the geek side of the argument is turning out here, and I don't disagree with it entirely. Not all geeks are people who have problems handling the mundane world, and it's terribly unfair that the media and society invariably paints all geeks in the worst possible light, even if some are like that.

But my problem with the issue is that I've had friends on the end of the spectrum that most frequently gets ripped apart in these discussions, even by other geeks. People who didn't quite know when to stop talking about their comic book collection, even past the point when people seemed to be bored. People who couldn't face a 9-5 job, or social interaction, because they simply broke down every time they tried. People who would happily have become hikikomori if only they could. People who turned up to conventions smelling kind of bad.

And yes, some of the people who fall into these categories are obnoxious, destructive, abusive.

But some of the people who just aren't that good at mundane life are also some of the most compassionate, gentle, thoughtful, philosophical and interesting people I've known.

And some of the people who live perfectly mundane, normal lives are obnoxious, destructive and abusive, moreso than the weirdest geeks and nerds I've ever known.

The person who was being down on the "loser geeks" the most self-identifies as a "bitch". Quite frankly, when it comes down to it, I'd much rather talk to someone who identifies as an elf than someone who identifies as a bitch. Calling yourself an elf, unlike calling yourself a bitch, isn't a declaration that you're inherently hostile and vicious towards all other intelligent beings.

I guess it basically makes me sad to read discussions like that because when people say "it's okay to mock and attack loser geeks", they're saying "it's okay to make the lives of some pretty nice, thoughtful, intelligent people miserable just because you think you're better than them". And I know some people do think that. It just makes me sad, that's all. And I know some people will laugh at the fact that it makes me sad. To some people, the only acceptable response is to deride these people; any attempt at compassion is a laughable weakness. I don't mind, at least not when they think it of me. But I still reserve the right to say it.

turn, turn, turn -- and a time for every purpose under heaven

2009-07-20T23:11:00.001-07:00

So I really haven't posted in here in forever. I guess I may as well say a few things about why.

I still love Ar Tonelico. Very much. I'm eagerly anticipating the third instalment in the series. But I guess, maybe, I haven't had anything new to say about it for a while. The more I see of AT2's Luca, the more I realise she is not my Luca, not the Luca I inexplicably became attached to in the first few hours of the game, before the scene in the prison. At some very early point in the game, my brain decided that Luca was a certain type of person, and it wouldn't let go. The cognitive dissonance hurt, but I've learnt to accept that the Luca I know and the game's Luca just aren't the same individual, or even really related. And so, though I'm curious about Luca's path in AT2, I know I'm never going to get attached to the person that path explores. The Luca-shaped hole in my heart, to paraphrase a Christian saying, has been filled by another.

I'm still annoyed by the far too frequent, far too glib use of the word "human" in NISA games in the company of, and even directly describing, non-human sentient species. I'm still annoyed by Croix and how he'll brush off Luca's descriptions of magic and intensity with "I don't get it..." yet still think he's suitable for a 400-year-old cranky Beta who's spent most of her life as formless data, who can destroy walls with a flick of her finger, who lives and breathes and feels magic more than she feels the physical world. I'm still annoyed that the game puts them together, too, and prefer to believe that Croix's own strong feelings for Jakuri warped a Cosmosphere in which she only wished to tell someone the story of what Harmonious meant to her.

I'm branching out a little, too. I'm playing Atelier Iris 3, and so far it's very enjoyable-- I'm loving the quest-centric format, and the way it provides challenges that aren't wholly combat-based. I'm really wanting Cross Edge, but I don't want to buy a PS3. I'm considering it's probably inevitable if AT3 happens to be on it.

I still think up ideas for short stories, flashes of imagery. I consider writing fanfics about what would happen if Jakuri killed Croix, or about the surges of unexpected, uncontrolled emotion that come with harmonising, how a calm and peaceful mood can be ramped up to bright and brilliant surges of feeling in a matter of moments. I still imagine the sparks going off behind the eyes of someone so entranced. I still imagine. I still live.

Mir is still my favourite canonical Reyvateil, and probably always will be. I still love her story, and I hope it gets the conclusion it deserves. I'll be cheering for that as hard as anyone, if not moreso.

I believe that monsters are small lives, that time is eternal, that hopes and dreams and fantasies are worth pursuing for as long as your heart still beats, and beyond. I believe in living like a Narnian, even if Narnia doesn't exist. I believe in many things, and I like believing. If you think you're too old to believe, or I'm too old to believe, I believe you should probably wake yourself up before you die completely inside.

My life is full of believers, and I like that.

I haven't been writing. And I haven't been reading, really, all of your blogs. I forget, when I'm not logged in here. But I have been living, and dreaming, and thinking of you all.

I pray that you all keep living and dreaming too.

monsters are small lives

2009-07-20T23:04:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in here in forever, I know. But I felt like sharing this one, undoubtedly never-screenshotted-before line of dialogue with a wider audience. If it turns up even once on a Google search, perhaps it'll make people think twice. It's something RPGs rarely think of, and while AT2 isn't exactly the best at not making monsters out of its monsters, it was nice at least to see this snippet of text in there.

A Reyvateil's Melody forum revival!

2009-04-05T14:58:00.000-07:00

http://artonelico.isisview.org

Long story short: please go here for the new unofficially-official forums, which will be run by a team of moderators (the better to spread power) and backed up daily with database dumps so that we can restore them if something should go wrong.

Many, many thanks to wizzardx for hosting and technical advice, and Deciare for more technical advice, in the face of this problem-- and to all who contributed, listened, or were simply there for us.

Here's to Metafalica: the new green land.

Also, please post in your blogs about this if you can. We need as many people as possible to know that these are the new forums in order to avoid confusion and community fracture. Please tell everyone you know!

State of the Reyvablog

2009-04-02T07:48:00.000-07:00

Just to let you know, for the time being, the Reyvablog will be private-access only. Anyone is perfectly free to access it-- you just need to contact me, via PM on the forums or via a comment here (or via my email if you have it), and give me an email address I can send an invite to. If you have a Gmail account, use that; if not, you'll have to create an account with Google.

Apologies for the inconvenience! We hope to return to public status at some point in the future, but until then, you just need to drop me an email and I'll get you an account set up.

Go~ go~ Miracle Editing Force~! Also, GODLY ART.

2009-03-18T23:07:00.000-07:00

So, looks like the translators are done with the first batch of scripts! Now it's the editing team's turn to take these apart, pretty them up, and generally get on with the task of making everything sound fluid and natural. Having unofficially grabbed the editing coordinator role for myself, I'm going to be starting in on these first, and passing them along as I complete them. Hope you're all okay with that. <|

In other awesome news, please, feast your eyes on this absolutely magnificent Reyvablog request pic by Linearis. It's a beautiful sketch (I was particularly fond of heartofharmony's rendering, as I've had so much trouble with getting pictures of her to look right-- this captures her personality and her fashion sense so well-- but they're all cute!), and it just gets even more impressive when you discover that the artist did this in four minutes. FOUR. MINUTES. Timed to a song, apparently.

Wonderful, wonderful stuff. Soon as I get the URL for the translation project stuff (as I'm woefully bad at remembering where things are), I'll get cracking on that.

The Mirball!

2009-03-17T20:47:00.000-07:00

At long last, I have acquired that one thing in SL without which my Mir avatar was not complete.... the Mirball, perhaps better known to most people as the shield she surrounds herself in at the end of AT1. Thanks so much to Eolande Elvehjem, who made this for me absolutely free of charge! (Warning: some small degree of obscured nudity.) 1 / 2

You have to see it in person to appreciate it fully; it animates, causing the texture to swirl prettily over the surface, and it works perfectly in flight, wherein Mir can hover and float around just as she does in AT.

We're Ar Tonelifying Second Life... one step at a time. =D

Mir's "180".

2009-03-17T08:25:00.000-07:00

Something I've been musing about.... (Spoilers for AT2 will follow.)

I've seen a number of fans, in various place, evince surprise at Mir's appearance in her Cosmosphere Level 8, going as far as to say things like "I can't believe Mir was really like this" and "she doesn't seem anything like the Mir we know". For the longest time, I never really understood what these people were getting at. As someone who's immersed myself in Mir's story since AT1, her appearance in her Level 8 didn't just seem congruous with her personality; it seemed almost mandated. I didn't find myself surprised by it in the slightest.

In fact, that was perhaps the one big downside of AT2 for me (or, perhaps, the downside of my immersion in Mir fannishness); practically nothing that came to pass regarding Mir surprised me at all. With the exception of a few odd little details of correlation between my internal concept of Mir and the game's concept that I couldn't have ever expected would be represented so accurately, I remained largely underwhelmed, because I'd thought about all of this, and retrodden it in my mind in painstaking detail.

I suppose the fact that it was all so accurate in itself should have surprised me, but... it didn't. I didn't feel like I was seeing anything I hadn't already seen in my mind. I worried a lot before playing AT2 that it wouldn't match up with my internal image of Mir, and I was glad that it did, yet the downside of having my mental image of the game match so well was that I didn't feel like I was playing a new game, but one I'd already played. The idea that Mir was really just a fragile, caring child inside, who wanted to build a better world... that seemed evident from Harmonious, from "Reyvateilia" (which always seemed such an explicitly childish name that I was sure that either she must have come up with it as a child or just had a very naive mindset), and, in AT2, from her various costumes and actions leading up to that. There are plenty of clues that Mir is awkward, naive, vulnerable, and socially undeveloped, that she was kind as a child and then lost her mind, and that what was being restored when Harmonious was sung was her innocent, pure way of looking upon life. All of these things, in fact, were what made her stand out to me as more than just a typical "abused villain" character. Yes, she fits the trope, but she's also so much more than that. The interesting part of her is that she's always been purehearted, and she's always held onto that dream.

But I guess the key phrase in all of this is "as someone who's immersed myself in Mir's story". If you don't think about Mir very much, you won't notice these subtle developments, this buildup to her character. You have to analyse her to see it. And the fact that she is so analysable, that AT2 was capable of presenting to me an image identical in almost every respect to the Mir I'd been imagining, despite the fact that basically all we ever see or hear of her is a voice roaring and screaming about wanting to destroy all humans... the fact that there were so many little clues there, from her shield-encased graphic in the final battle to the hymn Harmonious, and that they all did lead exactly where they looked, with enough thought, like they were meant to lead... I don't know. Something about that impresses me, in retrospect, even though it seemed so obvious at the time that it oddly didn't impress me at all.

You can analyse a piece of literature, and come up with elaborate, intricate theories about what the authors might have been trying to invoke with the symbolism, what was really underlying each and every scene, the deeper message that's being told. And while these theories are useful in examining what readers get out of a text, one gets the feeling that they don't often correlate with authorial intent. A simple piece of literature can suggest a million complex things, and yet these complex patterns are largely in the eye of the beholder. A good work will generate them, but they tend to have little bearing on the author's conscious intentions. That Tsuchiya and co. were conscious of all these little things, to the point where the sequel explicitly spells them out, seems impressive.

I remember people saying, back before AT2 was out in English, that Mir's heart wasn't something I understood, because I'd only played half the series. I understand what they meant, and yet at the same time, it makes me smile, a little, to look back and see people saying now how right I was all along, and realise that I did, always, know her heart. Not out of any smug feeling of "haha, I was right and you were wrong"; that's not it at all. It's simply that it makes me happy to realise that I did, after all, truly comprehend my favourite character, even without all of the extra information.

Mir's shaping up to be the most interesting character in AT thus far, and-- again, not in a smug way, just in a sort of... satisfaction-of-having-solved-the-puzzle way, I guess-- it's nice to be able to say "I knew she was interesting before it was cool".

Testing something: please stand by.

2009-03-11T14:43:00.001-07:00

Unless you're logged in as an author on the Reyvablog, you currently won't be able to view it. I'm just testing something out; please bear with me.

Shurelia in SL!

2009-03-11T14:35:00.000-07:00

So over in SL-land, our latest project just came to fruition... the creation of Shurelia! We managed to get a designer to produce some custom hair for us, which is now on sale at Discord Designs in-world (just search for it), titled, yep, Shurelia. I really hope some random AT fan stumbles across it at some point and does a double-take....

Mir eyed it with some suspicion before we tried it out on an actual Shurelia-ish model. (We need to get a better skin for her... the problem with SL skins is that they're generally far too huge in the lips.)

As you may have noticed, we're on a floating piece of land in the sky-- somewhat appropriate, and we just found it randomly.... Less fortunate was when Mir accidentally stepped backwards and plummeted into the Sea of Death. (This was made even more amusing/horrifying by the fact that Shurelia teleported her back up to the sky island again, only to misaim the coordinates and send Mir falling for a second time....)

Schoolgirl Shurelia is cute.

Shurelia the Mir fan!

Over time, they finally came to understand each other... with the help of a little bit of Dive Therapy. 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8

[Edit: The image that replaced "Mir falling into the Sea of Death" previously has now been swapped out for the right one. Consider it a moment of "Bleep"-style censorship. This image was too awful to show viewers, etc.]

werewolf biology 101

2009-03-10T11:22:00.000-07:00

What do knotted ropes tied to the fridge door handle, large quantities of probiotic drinks, and a dog's water dish have to do with each other? Well, they're all in dhezeall's kitchen, and not because she owns a dog. They're actually three things that she finds very useful because of her ability to shapeshift.

When dhezeall shifts forms, the energy released by the transformation causes everything on or in her body, that's not actually part of her body, to be atomised. It's a very localised reaction-- if you're touching her arm at the time you may get the top layer of your skin burnt off, and clothes have various chances of survival depending on what they're made of (though they can expect, on average, to get a little scorched), but the main things that go are things like dead skin cells and bacteria.

This has a couple of obvious advantages: for one, every time she changes forms, she becomes preternaturally clean. Even a baby, newly born from its mother's womb, is an unpleasant creature by comparison; having spent nine months surrounded by and drinking in the fluids of its mother, it's been part of life's natural interchange of microscopic lifeforms for quite some time. When dhezeall reforms, she does so as a being that has had no contact with the world until that point. She may look like a wild animal, which doesn't normally inspire thoughts of dazzling cleanliness, but in truth she's basically sterile to touch; her breath is pleasant, and her body doesn't carry the slightest hint of scent. As one might suspect, this feels pretty wonderful-- like the best exfoliating treatment imaginable, and then some.

The other advantage to this, of course, is that any bacterial or (non-computer-)viral illness she was harbouring inside her will be utterly destroyed, making her effectively invulnerable to infection as long as she has energy to shift. This isn't actually as impressive a skill as it could be, that said; most Reyvateils can achieve similar effects with healing magic, and a simple heal generally requires a lot less energy than a full physical transformation. dhezeall is a rare Reyvateil in that she doesn't really know how to heal at all, and so shapeshifting is her only way of shaking off disease.

In addition, this skill has one major downside. You need bacteria in your body to be healthy; the "friendly" kind, as they're frequently called, that help dispose of nastier bacteria and assist in food digestion. dhezeall's shapeshifting powers don't discriminate between the two, so every time she shifts, whether from Reyvateil to animal or back again, she needs to replenish that supply of bacteria or else have trouble digesting her food. Hence the large amounts of probiotic drinks, which she'll usually pour into a drinking bowl beforehand if she knows she's going to be shapeshifting; for the occasions where the desire strikes her suddenly (her magic is fairly unpredictable), the rope on the fridge door makes an easier pull handle for animal teeth to clamp onto, and she buys the drinks in large cardboard cartons so they're easier to tear open. There's also a similar rope attached to the faucet, so she can get herself water; the energy release from shapeshifting also dehydrates her cells, and she generally wants to drink a lot afterwards.

If asked what these are for, she'll generally say she has trouble with her wrists, and the ropes make it easier for her to operate handles that would normally cause her pain. It's quite easy to believe considering that she walks with a cane, and not everybody in her life knows why.

Opening cartons in animal form tends to make a heck of a mess, though, so she tries to avoid it where possible, instead resisting the temptation to eat until she can return to Reyvateil form. There's another reason she prefers not to eat as an animal, too; while her intelligent mind remains largely intact, pretty much the only food that seems palatable to her in that form is raw meat, and if she gives in to the temptation to hunt something, she's inevitably sickened by the memories afterwards. She can eat cooked meat, too, but actually getting access to it is the trickier part; there's rarely anyone around to cook it for her (and she trusts few people with the secrets of her magic), and she can't very well do it herself.

Furthermore, even consuming vast amounts of yoghurt drinks won't replenish all the bacteria that need replenishing-- not in such a short space of time. In practice, she's frequently not at her healthiest after a shapeshift until her body's had time to return to its normal state.

So there you go: being a werewolf isn't quite all it's cracked up to be, although there's still little that compares to the feel of bounding over open land, the earth beneath your paws and the wind in your fur. (Except... she actually can't do that, either. The install port doesn't go away in animal form, and neither does the limp.)

So what unusual items do your characters keep around the house, if any?

~reyvablog: omake post 2 (spoilers follow)~

2009-03-09T21:00:00.000-07:00

More omake!

Lyuma's IPD card, pages 2 and 3.

And inspired by the Reyvateil fusions thread on A Reyvateil's Melody... dhiyante/brizeall, and Lyr/Miuma. dhiyante is uberhot and conflicted about whether she wants to wear these clothes... Lyr is just an adorable gothic lolita. XD

dhezeall's genderform!

2009-03-08T15:39:00.000-07:00

dhezeall: So, at long last, I finally decided to go through this monster of a thing. May as well post it as an omake. Try one too, if you want.

~~Also, forgive the vast amounts of whitespace. Lemme know if you have a clue how to fix on Blogger. :\~~ Huh, apparently removing all the whitespace from inside the table, even the parts that came way after where the whitespace was displaying, worked. Weird.

Hello
My name is

dhezeall

My identity is

ALWAYS!, activist, admirer, alien, ambiguous, androgynous, bent, big sister, boy with a vagina, boy with boobs, caring, casually-dressed, chapstick lesbian*, chaser, confidant, counselor, creature, drag king, dude, female, female guy, female-bodied, femme-loving, flirt, friend, friend with benefits, friendly, full of love, gender confused, gender euphoric, gender expressive, happy, homo-romantic, homoemotional, homosexual, huggy, illusionist, impersonator, liberal, lover, mage, male lesbian*, manly-hearted woman, midgender, non-humansexual, non-trans, nonhuman-sexual, obsessed, outgoing, outspoken, oversexed, passionate, pervert, playful, polyamorous, polysnuggler, pro-sex feminist, promiscuous, Reyvateil in pants, Reyvateil-chaser, Reyvateilsexual, samespeciessexual, secretly male, sex positive, sexual, shaman, shapeshifter, singer, snuggly, soft butch, Teru-curious, third gender, top, transhuman, versatile, witty, wolf, working class

What's yours?

*Where "lesbian" isn't really accurate for reasons I've mentioned before, but it was the closest thing I could think of to convey the idea.

The Dog Food Rapture -- Ar Tonelico fanfiction (Reyvablog canon, 1,141 words, Reyvablog spoilers, some disturbing themes)

2009-03-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

A blog-entry-that-could-have-been, written by someone who never got to post it or whose post somehow never ended up getting linked on the Reyvablog. Maybe she couldn't find free internet access in time to write it up, or maybe the server ate her post, or maybe she just didn't get noticed. In any case, somehow, against the odds, it was salvaged from a world that now exists outside time.

It seems a bit odd warning for "disturbing themes" when the Reyvablog itself had no warnings. Perhaps I should put a warning in the author's notes?

---

My name is Merisa Csetla, and I have only a handful of days to live. Not because of Sublimation, but because I'm a Reyvateil living on the streets, and I can't afford Diquility. By my calendar, I'll expire in a little under two weeks.

Before that, if what happened to some of my friends is anything to go by, I can expect to spend my last day or two alive writhing and crying in agony, trying desperately to communicate to my few remaining friends my need for water, or warmth, or comfort, but having my words mangled beyond all recognition by the collapse of my rational mind. As I succumb to frightening hallucinations, curled up tightly on the filth-covered ground in an attempt to shut out the waking nightmares, my friends will be forced to try and interpret my mumblings as best they can, and mostly end up guessing at requests that only scare me more. Perhaps I was, even, asking for some of those things in the beginning, but then my vision warped and my mind broke down and the sight of moving liquid came to look like the distorted face of a demon. Eventually, my last thoughts being of darkness and pain, I'll probably fall into a coma from which I will never be roused. My friends will have to dispose of the body, which they'll probably do by dragging it behind a pile of trash. On the streets, even a worn, dirty blanket is a luxury; so are old clothes. They can't be spared for something so sentimental as a shroud.

After that, they'll sit around nervously and wait for it to happen to them-- as I'm doing now, having "buried" several who went before. Their hearts will be gripped, like mine is, by a deep and ugly terror that never quite abates. Like me, they'll remember that twisted, awful face, the greyish pallor, the bulging eyes, and they'll imagine that agony inside themselves, and they'll never quite sleep the same. And on the streets, sleeping is hard as it is.

And then... then it'll come to them, too, and one by one they'll go through it, until all that is left to show for their lives is a rotting huddle of corpses feeding the streets' abandoned dogs.

At least, that's how it would go, if not for Sublimation.

I know what you're thinking: so Sublimation will save some who might die horribly. But there are countless more people it hasn't saved, and many it still won't save. Don't I, who witnessed the death of my friends, understand that? Even if Sublimation saves you from that fate, is that any great thing, in the scheme of it all, compared to the billions who never lived to see these days? And does it justify changing an entire world?

As you can possibly tell by the fact that I have these arguments to hand already, I might have thought that too. In fact, at one point, I did think that. But then some pretty extraordinary news was leaked to me-- from that blog where one of the posters is apparently the girl who'll sing with Mir. (I believe her, personally. My friend who follows that blog says the accusations of her backdating her getting-shot posts are false; she saw those posts made well before the video of her came out, depicting the exact same injuries she described.) She said that, along with all the living people being saved, the dead are going to be raised, too. They're all in the Binary Field, intact, just sleeping, and they can know the world again if Mir calls all life to her side.

I've always been a bit of a Prime Directivist, really, if you'll excuse me twisting a term-- I'm still a specfic geek at heart, even if I sold my collector comics long ago. Sure, the Goddesses made the world or whatever, but I've never seen much of a reason to believe they've kept on having a hand in things. As far as I was concerned, they may as well have just made this world and walked off into the proverbial ethereal sunset, leaving us here to cope with what we have. Afterlife? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps this is the only life we'll ever have. I don't see what makes it particularly more likely there'd be one than not; the Goddesses don't seem to care much about our lives right now, after all.

But hearing someone personally involved with Sublimation say we go somewhere when we die, as a casual detail assumed as she made her greater point... that tipped the balance for me, I guess. Like I said, I'd had no reason to believe one way or the other with no evidence. Someone who's going to actually engage with all this telling me what it's like? Sure, I'll listen. Why lie? Mir clearly has a reason for doing this; if she intends evil, there's no reason not to scare us, and if she has a good reason, it'd have to be sufficiently good for her to even consider something like this. If she'd had to make things up, wouldn't that, perhaps, have hinted to her that this wasn't a good plan? Wouldn't she think her own reason was enough?

I, for one, think it's enough. Because it means that I won't die, and my friends won't die, and those of them who have already died and suffered aren't rotting on the streets, dumped behind the garbage, for nothing. The billions and billions of people who've already left this world didn't live for no reason. And when I go to that perfect world, never having known death, I'll see my dead friends again, and I'll see all those billions of people, too. People who died in the First and Second Eras, victims of the wars, people who knew and saw and did things I could never imagine. Everyone who ever lived. Ever.

And that's what makes Sublimation different from, better than, any other way this world could be saved. Social change? Wonderful-- but it won't bring back the lost. It won't make the continents unfall and all those people who died there start living again as if none of it had ever happened. It won't undo my cold, dead friends, whom the streets claimed for lack of care. People could stop hating overnight, war could end forever, and they'd still be cold and dead.

So next time you wonder if Sublimation's really a good thing for us, think about those billions of lives. And if you're wondering about billions yet to be born-- when did Mir say new life can't be made there? She seems to be all about life, right now.

Could there really be a better way for the world to end? I'm not sure I can think of one.

~reyvablog: archive~

2009-03-07T12:13:00.001-08:00

Less an "archive" than a "reordering", really, but for those of you who want to read the Reyvablog in chronological order (so as to avoid spoilers if you haven't read it before, or just to make it easier on you), the following links will take you through its history.

November: The Month of Coming Together

Dilemma
Why?
Pride
Reclaiming
Purpose
Ethnocentrism
Stories
Togetherness
Fourth
Heartening
Choice
Indenture
Guest
Existing
Respect
Small
Noise
Bizarre
Ruined
Fragile
Myths
Sides

December: The Month of Raising Voices

Dominion
Performance
Blindness
Prisoners
Certainty
Privilege
Marriage
Security
Haunting
Forums
March
Violence
Healing
Holidays

January: The Month of Self and Integrity

Shelter
Dignity
Uncertainty
Paranoia
Choices
Reprieves
Randomness
Survey
Nonpost
Lacking
Roundup
Compromise
Ending
Selfhood
Statement
Cage
Rites

February: The Month of Falling Apart

Important
Quick
Question
Sightings
Safety
Equality
Tricornered
Advertisement
Belonging
Responsibility
Interchangeable
Loss
Singer
Apology

March: The Month of Praising and Letting Go

Announcement
Trust
Lazy
Singleminded
Theory
Reasons
Memories
Figurehead
Reflections
Unwanted
Road
Hill
Journeys
Temporary
Technical
Golden
Transition
Activism
Permanent
Distance
Anticipation
Live 1
Live 2
Live 3
Live 4
Live 5
Live 6
Antiseptic
Shyness
Live 7
Live 8
Untitled
End

Ask The Reyvabloggers!

2009-03-07T09:44:00.000-08:00

For those of us who haven't yet achieved Sublimation/enlightenment/Nirvana and are still here on Earth missing our interactions with the Reyvablog people, I thought I'd start a thread in which people can ask questions of our characters-- either things you've always been curious about that might not have been explained during the course of the plot, or lighthearted meme-type questions just for fun. You can ask questions as your characters or as yourself, but characters have to respond in character. (They can also decline to respond-- that's fine too! And you don't have to answer a question before you can ask one-- obviously, since you may not even have a character.)

I'll kick off with a few....

dhezeall asks winters: So how much control do you have over that tail, anyway? Can you move it like an arm, or is it more limited?

heartofharmony asks polyhymnia: Can you describe the best experience you've ever had using your magic?

AR asks Rigil: I do know you two got engaged, but did you ever get to sing for Crystal after all, and how did she respond?

neonsunray asks celeliss: If you ever got to play Truth or Dare with Mir, would you ask her to tell a truth or do a dare, and what would the truth/dare involve?

Also, when asked what happiness was (and therefore what they would probably be experiencing in Sublimation), my characters' first responses were as follows:

dhezeall: Happiness is a warm Reyvateil. ♫ And, generally, affection and kindness and stuff.
heartofharmony: Happiness is being at peace and not having to fear or worry about anything.
AR: Happiness is a world where people don't seek to hurt each other just for being different.
neonsunray: Happiness is being able to be what you've always known in your heart you were meant to be.

What are your characters' first thoughts on what happiness is? Not complex philosophical theories (we can get to that later XD), just... the first things they think of?

Diquility theory

2009-03-06T20:12:00.000-08:00

[Guestblogged by Deciare.]

There is an article describing the triangular Reyvateilian heart (the nuclear triangular loop, also translated as the core triangular ring) as an aggregate of Static H-waves that eventually grows to become a Reyvateil's soul and character. From the heart, a continuous stream of Dynamic H-waves (emotions and intent) are emitted that causes the Reyvateil's body to constantly generate and regenerate itself as it decays over the course of time. It's effectively a constant emission of an intent to stay alive, or an intent to continue existing, prompting endless regeneration of the body's Static D-waves until the heart no longer functions.

The reason a Third Generation Reyvateil needs Diquility is because the nuclear triangular loop is an artificial construct, and doesn't exist in Reyvateils born the traditional way. Since Diquility is a concentration of "high-purity SHWs with no characteristics", if we were to think of that as an extension to what I said earlier about Reyvateils needing to resupply their "intent to continue existing", then we can theorise that the intent to continue existing is the most fundamental, basic intent. Like one's instinct of self-preservation.

... Which can be overridden by a Reyvateil's other emotions and intents; what else she is radiating as DHWs when she sings, when she harmonises, when she experiences events that cause her to feel something other than neutral.

Consider: Song Magic is a perfectly-articulated condensation of the singer's DHWs, without any omission. Isn't it strange that there is rarely any mention or survival or continuing to stay alive the lyrics of those songs?

Allowing non-essential feelings to be completely excluded from a Reyvateil's mind on both a conscious and unconscious level could significantly boost the strength of her song magic by increasing the purity of DHWs used to convey her intent to the Tower, and her emotion to herself. It's not too different from what humans were trying to do with Mir.

So Third Generation Reyvateils may need Diquility at all due to this gross design flaw in the name of efficiency. A Reyvateilian mind instinctively prioritises survival very low on the list when there are more salient emotions to be felt, and other things that she feels needs to be done.

It ties into the Reyvateilian desire for pervasive interconnectedness, too, as described by the Reyvablog. It's not only because they are used to feeling each other's hearts and don't wish to be alone. It's because even feeling someone else's emotions are so desirable, inspiring, and uplifting compared to feeling neutral. Which leaves one very little time to to actually focus on merely continuing to exist. Logically, one shouldn't have to concentrate one's emotions on continuing to exist, so it's counter-intuitive.

~reyvablog: omake post (spoilers follow)~

2009-03-06T18:52:00.000-08:00

So, just kicking off here with a couple of the omake bits I've created for the Reyvablog so far....

Lyuma as an IPD. I'll create page 2 of this at some point....

Randomly, isn't every city in the AT world an airport city? Firefly Alley, Nemo, Rakshek....

And a little bit of background for this next omake... I believe, at some point in the story, dhezeall mentions an experience where she went diving with her friends and couldn't handle the subsequent embarrassment she felt when they told her about what had happened in her Cosmosphere. As a result, she became uncomfortable with the idea of diving. Basically, the first level of her Cosmosphere dealt with her fears about being perceived as feminine and stereotypically Reyvateil-esque, as well as the secret crush she had on one of her friends. So, in her Cosmosphere, she approached said friend, acting shy and coquettish... and wearing a big floofy dress. Her friends didn't stop laughing for quite some time, and of course, she was mortified....

I do, however, have her permission (yes, I really do) to show you a couple of pictures of what that might have looked like....

On the Reyvablog and feminism: reflections

2009-03-06T16:40:00.000-08:00

What is on reflection really rather nice about the Reyvablog, I think, is that it's a piece of fiction where almost every character is female. Even out of the humans and Teru (who aren't necessitated to be female, unlike Reyvateils who basically only have one physical sex), there's a total of one male character, the human medical researcher Rigil (or Silver). It passes the Bechdel test several thousand times over. And, at least to my mind, it manages this without drawing attention to the idea that it's non-normative for fiction to do this.

Watching Dr Horrible recently, I remember thinking, "you know, if all the gender roles in this story were reversed, people would Notice. It would suddenly be a story about Female Villains and Female Heroes, not about villains and heroes." You can't have a story with a mostly female cast without people going, "whoa. Why is everyone female?" A mostly male cast, however, doesn't raise an eyebrow. Male is the unmarked category, the default, the average.

On the Reyvablog... there was actually no marked category, in my mind. The bloggers didn't stand out for being female; Rigil didn't stand out for being male. I forgot what gender winters was a lot. And that was nice. What was also nice was that it wasn't, to my mind, a very "girly" story at all; it wasn't a story About Lots Of Girls Who Do Girl Things. I suppose in part that was because it was more About Lots Of Reyvateils Who Do Reyvateil Things, but still, from a this-world standpoint it's refreshing. All-female casts can too often cause writers to force the story into being about Shopping and Fashion and Boys, as opposed to, you know, just normal people living their lives no matter what gender they are.

The Reyvablog was about some tough people, some fragile people, some educated people, some naive people, and plenty of people in between who spanned the whole spectrum of things people can do and be and think. They weren't constantly oohing over relationships or simpering or preening; nor did they consistently ignore things like being pretty or having partners. A lot of them didn't feel they needed partners to make their lives complete, and would rather not have had the ones they were forced to be with. One of them was basically the female equivalent of that guy you know who's always saying "lol, I'd tap that". (dhezeall was interesting to write, actually. A male character like her would, I think, have come off as at least a little bit bothersome and pushy; she was quasi-famous for saying to one character who described themselves physically, "great, now I have to imagine you sitting behind your keyboard being hot". She playfully hit on and innuendoed at the other characters a lot. She was never crude or demanding about it, though, and she would have stopped immediately if someone had expressed their dislike; and she was also very mature in other senses, and very kind. She took in a naive sixteen-year-old homeless girl and would cut out her normal way of bantering with people around her, because she was sixteen. But as a guy, I think she might have been intimidating just because of the history of the sexes.)

It was, ultimately, I think, a really good story about people and rights and the end of the world and all sorts of other things. It was a story about people, with an almost exclusively female cast. That's not often seen, and I'm proud of it.

Fitting quotes for the moment.

2009-03-06T12:46:00.000-08:00

I keep the quotes below in a file on my computer, because I like to be inspired by them from time to time. Looking at them now, I realise they're all extremely fitting for the Reyvablog, in various ways.

Implied Reyvablog spoilers follow.

The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession.
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

One single grateful thought raised to heaven is the most perfect prayer.
G. E. Lessing (1729 - 1781)

There is no greater joy nor greater reward than to make a fundamental difference in someone's life.
Sister Mary Rose McGeady

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Wisdom and spirit of the Universe!
Thou soul is the eternity of thought!
That giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! Not in vain
By day or star-light thus from by first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul,
Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature, purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying, by such discipline
Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)

We've always been here and we'll always be here. We are a specific arrangement of particles and this instant is infinite. Did we luck out, or didn't we? The odds against this sentence having ever being typed, much less the odds against you reading it were inconceivable. Smile, because the fact that you're able to is almost impossible to comprehend.
Jeffrey Rowland

There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to the page, a gossamer web. They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them, a string of squiggles. Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted, as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into concrete classical entities-- potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved geometry-- that was a sublime experience. The iron fist of the real, inside the velvet glove of airy mathematics.
Gregory Benford - Timescape

If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can satisfy, also we should begin to wonder if perhaps we were created for another world.
C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)

I am convinced that the world is not a mere bog in which men and women trample themselves in the mire and die. Something magnificent is taking place here amid the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme challenge to intelligence is that of making the noblest and best in our curious heritage prevail.
Charles Austin Beard (1874 - 1948)

~reyvablog: behind the scenes (major spoilers follow)~

2009-03-06T12:04:00.000-08:00

EXEC_with.METHOD_SUBLIMATION/. ~omness chs ciel sos infel~ #Mir with Lyuma extracting
Ending song

The above linked file is actually EXEC_over.METHOD_SUBLIMATION/. ~omness chs ciel sos infel~; the lyrics are mostly identical, with one small change. Please open your heart, and use your imagination. :)

Thanks to aquagon for the original translation and the translation of my edited lyrics.

Chs hymma en famfa der ciel,
Like the birds that fly in the firmament

chs plina en grlanza art fhyu,
Like the plants that dance thanks to the wind

chs hasyu en zassyen der sielp,
Like the fish that swim in the rivers

chs bister en rana anw dor,
Like the animals that run on the land

was yea ra messe anw briyante.
I will be happy to convey to the world my voice of joy

Wassee anw fane lusye,
Let's praise love's shining light

wassee zess frawr bautifal en afezeria,
Let's praise this blessing, as beautiful as a blooming flower

wassee en chs Sublimation.
Let's praise our own Sublimation

Was yea ra omness chs ciel sos infel iem, wassee!
Now, I will be happy to turn my life into a world for the sake of love. Let's praise!

Wassee!
Let's praise!

Was yea ra wael yorr uteu enw fernia,
I'm happy to see you sleeping with a smile,

en sorr quen art ftt omnis crudea.
a smile that exists because suffering has vanished.

Was yea ra wael yorr yaserwe,
I'm happy to see that you are relaxing,

en melenas oure en yanwe oure sor.
and thinking "What do I love the most? What is most important to me?"

Was yea ra grandus ciel sos infel.
I will be happy to protect this world, because of love.

Was ki ra fogabe van anw na fogabe cupla.
I will concentrate in forgiving even the unrepentant

Wassee, fatele gyajlee haf alroetsue,
Let's praise, so that the sinners can find atonement

wassee forgandal dauane keenis na nozess,
Let's praise, because the radiance of the dawn will not disappear

wassee en chs Sublimation.
Let's praise our own Sublimation

Was ki ra yorra sarrifis anw omnis noes, wassee!
Now, everyone, offer yourselves to me. Let's praise!

Wassee!
Let's praise!

xN rre cia n.m.l. ut talam ag f.r.l. du tussu/.
The sky is being dyed with the color of the dawn, and I tremble with the presentiment of change

xN rre sarr m.n.g. du tyui lyuma/.
Let's try to catch that tiny star once more

xU rre urgn zz tUkd ut LYAglansee,
The laments no longer reach us,

targue rre qejyu zUzx
and even if the people are still despairing,

ag tUn za vUt dn balduo sefanl/.
they will stop living in the forest of darkness

Wee yea ra rre lyafre famfa en jass anw iasien;
I'm happy that the morning dew is claimed by the flying butterflies;

en tarfe tou yos maun.
they gently rest upon your closed eyelids

xU rre sefanl s.n.k.k. aje qraffa,
I'm sad that the trees have finished sprouting their new leaves

en h.k.t.t. nafan du ouwua kouf/.
and that they have wrapped us gently in their whispers

Was nyasri ga hieg yorra guaysu
I'm sad that you are depressed

art crudea en raklya art idesy memora.
because of the sufferings and cries that come from the memories of the past

Tasyue anw gyuss en yosyua yor,
I will offer my embrace to you and console you

tasyue anw ciel en dople anw omnis lamenza,
I will offer myself to this world, and I will remove the laments from it

tasyue en chs Sublimation.
I shall offer myself, and my Sublimation

Was yea ra sonwe sos yor en valwa anw ciel.
I will be happy to sing for your sake, and to purify the world

Was yea ra omness chs ciel sos infel.
I will be happy to turn my life into a world, for the sake of love

Was yea ra grandus ciel sos infel.
I will be happy to protect this world, because of love

Wassee anw fane lusye,
Let's praise love's shining light

wassee zess frawr bautifal en afezeria,
Let's praise this blessing, as beautiful as a blooming flower

wassee en chs Sublimation.
Let's praise our own Sublimation

Was yea ra omness chs ciel sos infel iem, wassee!
Now, I will be happy to turn my life into a world for the sake of love. Let's praise!

Was yea ra chs yuez en yanje yanje pitod yor.
I'm happy to be with you, and I want to be forever, forever with you

Was yea ra chs yuez en yanje yanje pitod yor.
I'm happy to be with you, and I want to be forever, forever with you

Was yea ra chs yuez....
I'm happy to be with you

The players

Mercís Enfandria (AR): 31 years old, long-time activist and independent Reyvateil, and owner of the blog "Falling Through the Generation Gap". After becoming interested in Reyvateil rights in her teenage years, she made a vow to herself, as many other Reyvateils have, to live independently of "the corps"-- the Church and Tenba, the two big organisations in Sol Ciel who provide free Diquility to Reyvateils in exchange for what she saw as emotionally demanding and coercive work. After working several regular if low-paying jobs, she fell upon dire circumstances and for several years worked as a prostitute, doing volunteer activist work by day, until a strange and random act of kindness turned her life around.

While she was a prostitute, she began to look to Mir as a symbol of hope in times of adversity, and, as revealed in the side-story The Flesh Fair, covertly wears a hand-crafted red-and-black pendant in dedication to her.

She shares the same last name as Leish Enfandria, one of my other OC Reyvateils, but they're not actually related (or at least, only very distantly, in the same way that two people with the last name Wood might share a common ancestry many generations back). She's extremely tight-lipped about her upbringing and family history; even those close to her know very little about it. Much like Luca Truelywaath, she has amber eyes.

Daire Nakayoji (dhezeall): 26 years old, long-time activist and independent Reyvateil. Known for her use of dry wit, dressing casually and androgynously, and flirting with anything with an install port; carried on a hush-hush relationship with Mayalan, a Church Reyvateil with a human partner and a friend of polyhymnia's, for a large portion of the plot, though only celeliss was in a position to know about it. Because of bullying inflicted on her as a teenager, her right ankle (where her install port is) is weak, and she typically walks with a cane.

Despite her sometimes sharp words towards people she considers ignorant, Daire is a caring, friendly and socially responsible person. She, like AR, has a history of being heavily involved with offline activism, though she joined the movement several years later. At various times, her floor and couch have been home to several Reyvateils in need of shelter, including celeliss.

Her father, who hated Reyvateils, forbade music from being played in the house when she was growing up. As a result, she can't stand silence, and plays music at a low volume constantly when she's home. She carries a portable music player for the commute to and from work; the ride isn't exactly silent, but she says being able to shut out the crying babies and bickering teenagers makes her journey bearable.

She's interested in the concept of non-binary gender identity as it applies to her, and considers her gender to be "Reyvateil in pants", a statement she made quasi-flippantly but with serious meaning behind it; she prefers female pronouns but considers her femaleness to be secondary to her Reyvateil nature in terms of what defines her. In 21st-century queer theory terms, "soft butch" fits her pretty well as a descriptor. Being only attracted to Reyvateils, rather than females as a whole, she rejects the definition "lesbian", arguing that there ought to be another word for Reyvateil-specific attraction.

Daire has never had a great deal of control over her magic; it tends to come to her suddenly and only when she's in dire need, and has no consistent theme. She manifested her first spell, a powerful blast of fire, as a teenager to escape her abusive home. Though she never mentions it to anyone, she also has shapeshifting magic, and has been known to occasionally look something like this, amongst other things. (Not my art.)

Alodia Hyafazerie (heartofharmony): 19 years old, Reyvateil employed with the Church of Elemia. A shy, introspective girl, raised by her father on dreams of an ideal life in the Church, she was subsequently partnered with a controlling and unpleasant man and forced to confront the stark reality that the Church guaranteed no happily ever afters. Realising that even those she believed in might not always be telling her the full truth, she began to wonder what else she'd not heard the truth about, and, driven by her increasing understanding that forced partnering was unfair, she found her way into activism.

On the outside, Alodia is exactly what many people expect a Reyvateil to be: feminine and graceful in her demeanour, with a fondness for pretty clothes and a seeming willingness to submit to authority. However, her brain is also very much alive and ticking, and while she's still sometimes brought up short by the things she was indoctrinated to believe, she values critical thinking and tries hard to implement it in her daily life. She's a voracious reader of all kinds of things, from novels to the political and scientific journals she finds in the library, and has never quite been able to shake her weakness for pulpy romantic fantasy, even if in reality she's grown wary of the romance game. Like many Reyvateils, while she's not entirely asexual, she leans more towards harmonic bonding with her own kind as her primary way of relating emotionally to others.

An extremely non-aggressive person, she'd like life to simply be peaceful and free of conflict. Eventually, she gets her wish, from the source that she least expects.

Lyuma Sechel (neonsunray): 18 years old, college student. Came to the blog after following a trackback link from a news article that featured her, written by an undercover journalist without her permission. One of the few Reyvateils in Sol Ciel ever to pursue a college education after being funded by her rich parents and encouraged to pose as human, she studied business, wanting to do something for her species by someday making it to the top of a big corporation and helping to change working conditions for the better; but deep down her heart always lay with the arts, specifically painting. She tells people that she began painting Mir because she wanted to explore the many controversial issues that surround her, but secretly Mir had always fascinated her for more reasons than that.

Lyuma is empathetic, even for a Reyvateil, and prone to dreaming big and believing wholeheartedly in those dreams, even when they make her seem disconnected from reality to others around her. The turning point in her life came when she decided to leave her prestigious college position to pursue Mir to Metafalss, where she ended up being shot in a riot and rebuilt with mechanical parts. During this time, Mir also upgraded her to be insanely powerful-- enough to be guaranteed to be able to handle an Extract Hymn, which put her at a level almost on par with a Beta Reyvateil-- and attached her to Infel Phira, so that she could sing the METHOD part of the Hymn Sublimation.

When she was injured, she lost her left arm, which meant she also lost the use of her install port (it was on her left wrist). Thankfully, she had enough Diquility within her to last her until the end of the world; it's unsure whether Mir could have found a way to manually give her Diquility if she'd needed it before then.

She formerly had long brown hair, but cut it when she went to college. The red-and-black dye job she frequently sports is a subtle, codified way of expressing her devotion to Mir.

The politics

Falling Through the Generation Gap was heavily inspired by real blogs in the field of activism, particularly race and gender equality activism. While my activities in the sphere of activism are, unfortunately, pretty much limited to reading said blogs and trying to reform my thinking based on what I've learnt from them, I do feel that my attempts to understand the uncomfortable social issues they raise, as commented on by those who have to live with the impact of them day in and day out, have helped me to develop my personal morality.

As a result of becoming increasingly aware of these kinds of social issues, when I played Ar Tonelico for the first time, I immediately started reflecting on the problems a disenfranchised "second-class species" like the Reyvateils would realistically face. Disappointed that the game hinted at these problems but didn't really develop them, and that other fans didn't seem to be interested in speculating much on them either, I decided to start exploring them in my own fiction, directly comparing them to existing social issues in this world, with two aims: to get fans to think more about how Reyvateils don't have the same advantages and options as everyone else, and to raise awareness of similar inequalities that currently exist in this world. The plot veered away from that structure a bit at the very end, as it took a more supernatural turn, but judging from the comments I've received, I think I still managed to make a few people think harder about various social issues.

...Somehow, that all came off sounding incredibly arrogant; as if I, a privileged white male, could ever really speak for these people. But, at least in this fandom, no one else was going to if I didn't say something first, and I felt something needed to be said. I hope I did some justice to the diverse range of voices out there, and I'm extremely thankful to all the players who added their voices to the mix and helped keep it from being a monolith.

Thanks to, among others, the people at The Angry Black Woman (who inspired the Angry Reyvateil's name), Feministe, Feministing, Alas, a blog, and Shapely Prose, for being a constant source of inspiration, insight, and perspective as I constructed this work of fiction. Also, special thanks go to innumerable LiveJournal people, whose usernames I've long since forgotten, who participated in various iterations of International Blog Against Racism Week; your posts were what sparked off my first tentative forays into privilege theory and the activist community, and made this whole thing possible.

The media

One of the fun things about writing the Reyvablog was getting to play with various sorts of media. I wanted the blog to be as authentic a facsimile of a real activist blog as I could make it, and so early on I made the decision to link to screenshots of various fictional news articles, which all used templates shamelessly stolen from actual news sites. People seemed to like the feeling of authenticity and gravity this lent to the story, and so over time I used this as an excuse to get even more creative with various forms of media, even going as far as to typeset, print out, and then subsequently scan a four-page article to make it look as if it had been scanned from a real magazine. This was printed actual size, on A3 paper, at a print shop; it's totally the real deal.

Players joined in, too; we even had one of our players compose a poem which one of the characters was meant to have found on an amateur poetry website. It was a good poem in its own right, yet it wasn't even a feature piece; it was casually tucked away within a comment in the middle of a long thread, and largely overlooked. Such was the attention to detail that was put into this work of fiction.

The aural aspect of the blog was particularly fun to play with. I figured Reyvateils probably rely on sound quite heavily, so I'd like to have included even more sound clips, but I'm no audio expert and they're fairly time-consuming to do. For the speeches in Hymmnos, I sent the scripts in English to Lazy and had him translate them into Pastalia Hymmnos and Standard Hymmnos respectively; the Pastalia Hymmnos was so insanely complex that I reduced it to a phonetic approximation of the syllables before sending it off to haounomiko, who performed as the voice of Mir and Shurelia. Deciare also aided in the translation of an important part of the Standard Hymmnos speech. Background crowd noise on the speeches was acquired from various YouTube videos, including some clips of street celebrations for Obama when I wanted the noise to lean more towards cheers than jeers. The song of the streets was created by blending whale song, New Age harmonic chants, and the Hymn of the Fayth from FFX played backwards. XD

The ending

...Yes, I "killed off" all my characters. I "killed off", at least in this timeline (I'm sure iterations of them that belong to any other stories you're writing will be just fine), all your characters. I hope that you're able to be comforted by the words of Sublimation, the knowledge that they truly are now in a better world, and this compilation of thoughts and reflections on the story.

My intention, for what it's worth, was not to craft a bad, cruel or negative ending. Rather, feeling that it got a raw deal in the original game, I wanted to write a story that showed a different side to Sublimation. I believe that change doesn't have to be a negative thing, that even such a complete transformation of the world we're used to doesn't have to be bad. I don't believe, as many stories want to argue, that we're necessarily best served by holding onto everything that makes us human (or Reyvateil, or Teru), including all the flaws.

I've also, since the end of AT1, wanted to see a story in which Mir finally gets to create the utopia she's always dreamed of. AT3 may yet be that story-- but just in case it isn't, I wanted to write this one, because I believe it's a story worth telling. Again, too often in stories (RPGs in particular), the person who wants a "perfect world" is shown to be misguided, because people would prefer to live on just the way we are. I think living on as we are is great-- but we can also, potentially, do better. For once, I wanted to write a story where the person changing the world was in the right.

On the flip side, that's not to say that there was no suffering or loss involved in the transformation. Even those who truly believed in the goodness and necessity of it had their doubts, at first. I had Mir give the characters five days to reflect on their situation because I wanted to highlight that, when confronted with the certainty of their world's ending-- even if they were explicitly told that that ending was for the better-- people would need time in which to process things. For some, even, five days didn't seem like enough. For others, no amount of time could ever truly feel like "enough". For others yet, five days was almost longer than they could bear. The main characters inhabited various spaces on that spectrum, at various points in time. I wanted to provide a space for people to explore the idea of what someone faced with a world on the brink of transformation would think, feel and do.

I hope I did a good job of conveying the bittersweet nature of the transition, from speech and sorrow to the final, hopeful event. If you haven't yet, please do listen to EXEC_over.METHOD_SUBLIMATION/. ~omness chs ciel sos infel~, read the lyrics as you listen, imagine Mir and Lyuma's voices singing to create the new world of spirits, and reflect on the time you spent among these characters and what they meant to you.

With your help, I was able to craft a much greater work of fiction than I ever could have alone.

Thank you for playing.

Feel free to add your thoughts, questions, character profiles, bits of info you never got to reveal on the blog, etc., etc. to this thread!

~fin~

2009-03-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

Well, that's it. The end. No more. No more comments on the Reyvablog, please. Sublimation has occurred.

We'll be back with an afterword post on exec_harmonious very shortly, where we'll be holding a cast party for everyone who's been reading (and watching) who wants to add their thoughts-- so please keep watching this blog for that. It ain't over 'til the Mir sings... oh. Never mind, then.

Reyvablog goes quasi-live.

2009-03-05T10:52:00.000-08:00

Or at least, frequently updated.

Remember, 12 noon PST, 3pm EST on Friday, if you want to be there at the end of the world. Blogging will probably start an hour or two before that, so tune in early to keep up as things go along, but that's our final call.

(Why, yes, I did just cleverly conflate Pacific/Eastern time and Pastalia/Elemia time, how nice of you to notice. XD)

AR: screenshot showcase, and a little backstory

2009-03-04T20:25:00.000-08:00

In these last days of the world of Ar Ciel, the homeless Reyvateils who slept outside AR's apartment complex are no longer there. She hopes that, wherever they've gone, it's somewhere safe, a warm and comfortable vantage point from which to watch the end of the world. Maybe they returned to their families, finally able to reconcile and put the issues that held them apart behind them. Or maybe some charitable soul was able to give them a new start. Either way, somehow, the atmosphere in these slums feels a little calmer, a little less laden with suffering and doubt, than it did several days ago. 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6

Back in AR's small apartment, the room seems cleansed by the still light of sunset, liquidy and gold. Even these dark places are slowly having their pall lifted from them, it seems, in preparation for a new world's arrival. Not a thing can feel too cruel, too cold, or too shabby in these final hours, for cruelty and coldness hover on the brink of banishment. 1 / 2 / 3

A sidenote: The doll is Amarie, the physical inspiration for AR's Mind Guardian. (Named that well before AT2 came out, incidentally! I guess it's a popular name in that world....)

She was actually once somewhat intelligent, about as much so as a household pet; the technology that produced Reyvateil-level artificial intelligence went through a lot of refinements, first creating beings with the mental capacities of simpler animals before going on to replicate humans. This cruder technology, in the modern day, is now fairly cheap, and is frequently used to produce toys for children that cost about as much as a "talking" doll using very simple technology would today.

Through the development of such beings-- possessing the intelligence level of animals, yet capable of speech-- humans learnt a lot about the emotional capacities and needs of various animals, and stronger animal cruelty laws were introduced in many nations. Ironically, however, the dolls themselves are often treated poorly for being "artificial", with many simply discarded when they break or the child gets tired of them. While they don't feel pain, don't take offence, and are generally extremely meek, kindly and non-destructive, in order that they might be fit playthings for children, they still have needs for comfort and security, which can often conflict with the desires of a child who sees themselves as having outgrown toys. Reyvateils are often much more sensitive to the needs of these toys than humans, and many have found them to be steadfast companions whom they treasure as dearly as flesh-and-blood pets.

AR has carried Amarie's physical counterpart with her from home to home since she was five years old, occasionally relying on advice from hobby forums in order to carry out servicing on her that she couldn't afford to pay someone to do. Several years ago, Amarie simply stopped functioning, and there seemed to be no way she could be repaired within the limits of AR's budget; AR debated whether to keep what in some ways seemed like a corpse, but found she simply couldn't bear to part with her. Thus Amarie now lives with her as a silent companion, a continuing source of comfort, yet her only life within AR's own mind.

Oddly enough, the time the doll-Amarie stopped working was around the same time as AR found herself out of reputable work and took up an unfortunate career on the streets. The symbolism of this is not lost on her.

In AR's mind, she wears a small suit of armour and carries a spear.

Hymmnos lacks words for a lot of things.

2009-03-01T12:46:00.001-08:00

That little comic I talked about yesterday. (Warning: contains spoilers for today's Reyvablog plot.) Born as a result of the problems we had translating Mir's speech....

and she may cry, but her tears will dry/when I hand her the keys to a shiny new Pastalia....

2009-02-28T10:52:00.000-08:00

Further to my previous "no Reyvablog posts until Sunday" missive, winters just made a guest post over there, so there's something up right now after all. :) Go check it out.

Did another Reyvablog photoshoot in SL last night; mostly just test shooting, putting together new avatars for some story-related snaps we're going to take later, but got several images in the meantime that I wanted to show off (as well as a little outtake comic that I'll post after tomorrow, since it contains spoilers for the current plot).

Mir and Lyuma 2.0 chilling at the Mirbunker ~~as furnished by IKEA~~, and looking far more villainous than they really ought. If you were wondering exactly what happened to neonsunray and what she looks like as a result, here you go; that respirator actually makes some pretty terrifying hissing sounds in-game, by the by. 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

Just a random shot I thought was amusing; it looks like Mir's checking out a stain on the carpet.

And, at long last, our esteemed blogger herself, AR, enters the picture! And is also chilling at the Mirbunker, for the reason that we'd already set up the room and were basically just putting together her avatar. 1 / 2 / 3

And, taken a while back, but haounomiko got some wonderful glamour shots of briyante posing and enjoying the Tenba facilities-- and IIRC none of you have seen what she looks like yet, so I had to show these off when I got them in my inbox. 1 / 2 / 3

And finally, courtesy of haounomiko-- JAKURI PER4MANCE UPGRADES 4 UR MIND. That's all I have to say.

Secret Jakuri costume!

2009-02-27T13:26:00.000-08:00

For those following the current Reyvablog plot arc, just letting you know that our next update is planned to be on Sunday; do tune in for that. As of now, all our characters can do is wait for news, and control of that is in Mir's hands....

In the meantime, tide yourselves over with this awesome discovery I made in AT2. By fulfilling certain super-secret criteria in game that have been previously undisclosed, you can access Jakuri's ultimate, hidden costume... the "Standard (AT1)" costume.

Yes, it is what you think it is. (Slightly NSFW image; nudity covered by hair on tiny pixel person?) And yes, the silly damage numbers are because I was trying to take a picture of the screen and get to a decent frame of the battle at the same time.

...okay, okay, so this was totally 'shopped, but you have to admit, when you first found out Jakuri's secret, you all wondered whether she'd have this costume.

Reyvateil rights goodies ahoy!

2009-02-18T12:54:00.000-08:00

Just so you know, you can now treat yourself, courtesy of the Reyvablog, to a selection of pro-Reyvateil-rights goodies! We've got shirts, caps and mugs in a variety of designs, and we've done our best to make everything size- and style-inclusive within the limitations of Cafepress' system-- if you need something in a size or style it isn't in, let me know.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank all of you-- the proud, the few, the greatly appreciated-- who have participated in the Reyvablog up until now. We couldn't have done it, and couldn't continue to do it, without you, and trust me when I say that all of you who've participated have contributed something invaluable. You've all played along with the spirit of the blog extremely well, needing little guidance or instruction, and it's been inspiring to see what you've all done with the format. You've challenged our expectations, brought in new content and plot twists, and generally done an excellent job of Getting It. We hope you'll stick with us until the very end; the best is yet to come, so do keep checking back for updates, as we're forging ahead with the plot.

The Myth of Redemptive Violence

2009-02-10T20:38:00.001-08:00

Not normally the kind of subject I cover over here in my fanblog, but... this is absolutely fascinating, and bears mentioning everywhere.

Wikipedia article
An excerpt from Walter Wink's original essay on the subject

Even before I got to the point in the Wikipedia article where it mentions videogames, I was thinking, "this is my problem with most RPGs". Discovering this myth allowed me to locate the missing piece that's always eluded me when talking about how I think violence is too often assumed to be the default solution even in games that otherwise promote pacifism; how the concept of a "battle system" undoes the good that many games try to encourage through their storylines; how developers seem to be incapable of realising the conflict between their use of battle mechanics and the messages of their games.

They are incapable of realising it.

It's endemic. "Good arises only when you have defeated (the physical manifestation of) evil; therefore, beat the bad guy" is such a standard plot that even cartoons for very young children feature it. Sure, they'll include caveats so as not to appear too bloodthirsty, like the bad guy retreating while cackling "I'll get you next time!" rather than being killed, but the core plot remains: we mst conflict with the servants of evil, and we must triumph.

If I believed in Satan, I'd be up for saying this is Satan's biggest lie; I certainly now know how Christians feel when they make that kind of statement. Of course, the idea of Satan is in itself forged from this myth, from the idea that an entity can personify evil and that this entity must eventually be hunted down and destroyed, but the sentiment behind at least that statement-- that humanity has, for countless years, operated under the influence of a lie so seductive that the vast majority don't even know they're being seduced-- makes sense enough. We're pretty good, as a species, at telling ourselves lies; it's an unfortunate side-effect of the fact that we make sense of our lives through telling ourselves stories. We're good at telling ourselves that the current hated group of the day is really out to get us, that freedom isn't and by implication never should be free, that the good guys always triumph and, as such, if we triumph then we must be the good guys.

There's nothing wrong with good winning, but the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house, to quote one insightful individual. If we use violence to attempt to best evil, we only play into evil's hands; for there is no such thing as evil, really, other than our oppression of each other with violence in word, deed and thought.

I want to see society stop using the master's tools to try and dismantle the master's house. I want the lie that we should strive to fight evil, to maim evil, to laugh in the face of evil as it dies-- no, even to reluctantly glance back at the fallen corpse of evil, and say "it was regrettable, but it had to be done"-- to be undone. Because evil isn't a living thing; it's a concept. What lies before you is no more or less than the corpse of a being that was once alive, slain by evil itself. You can't kill evil, can't stick a knife through its heart.

And that disturbs people who've been raised on the myth of redemptive violence, because they feel powerless unless they can lash out, unless they can stab, unless they can subdue, because that's what society tells us winning is. And that's why we need to stop teaching people that myth, because it makes us feel sure that to do good, one must hurt evil, and leaves us feeling hollow when we can't hurt, when we can't attack, when we can't conquer. Most people would feel unsatisfied if they got to the end of an RPG and there was no final boss battle. We need the "satisfaction" of defeating our enemy. We need it because we've been raised on the myth of redemptive violence.

Once we recognise that this is holding us back, as a species, from resolving all of our problems, we'll finally begin to grow. I'm confident the world will come to realise it in time. After all, so many of you already do.

Peace won by the sword will fall by the sword. I've always thought this statement was profound; turns out I hadn't even realised the extent of its profundity until now. With one carefully-tuned phrase, Mir both echoes both the words of feminist writer Audre Lorde and attacks-- no, not attacks; she rebuts; see how easily it creeps into our language-- the myth of redemptive violence. Tellingly, she says this when you're about to kill her, when you take the bad path in AT1. Even more tellingly, perhaps, she says this even while preparing to fight you, even after a lifetime of fighting. She knows it's true, but she can't escape, because the myth is such a seductive one: just beat the ones oppressing you, and your oppression will be gone! But it doesn't work like that, because every act of violence is an act of oppression, and the oppressed, and those who cared for them, will strike back in turn; and on it goes.

This is the lesson Mir teaches. This is the lesson that, if you fight against her, she recognises yet fails to embrace the whole way, because someone has to drop the sword first; and if it's not you, why should it be her? Why should she concede? It shouldn't have to be any of us, we think, but it needs to be one of us, because, as the bad ending shows, otherwise the violence never ends. It needs to be one of us, even if that one is the one who was attacked first. Even if we're in the right. Even if we have every reason to want to fight back. Someone has to. Someone has to, or else no one will.

Showing off my talk topic collection....

2009-02-06T23:20:00.000-08:00

Gratuitous completion-bragging ahoy! Don't click if you don't want to see pics of maxed-out affection stats/talk topic grids (also shows one of the late-game costumes). Really, that's all it is; nothing special here. Just shameless "yay, I maxed out Jakuri!" picspam. See my previous post if you'd like something more meaty/informative/interesting.

Talk topics, 100%

Stats, 100%

The way to Jakuri's heart....

2009-02-06T13:38:00.000-08:00

Apparently, this is to be the 100th post on exec_harmonious. Given the purpose for which the blog was opened, I can't think of many more fitting subjects for this anniversary post than my completion of AT2, on Jakuri's route.

Spoilers for the entire game and for Jakuri's path follow, blacked out for your convenience. Don't read until you've finished the game. (Spoilers for WALL-E, too, if you were planning to go see that movie. Yes, I am comparing the two. Don't ask.)

Ever since I finished AT1 and started dwelling heavily on Mir's role in the game, I've been hoping to see a game in which Mir finally fulfils her childhood dream: the creation of a perfect world. Her dream was never a flawed or selfish one; it was only the methods by which she attempted to realise it that left something to be desired. I'd always hoped that we'd get to see her in a position to finally craft her utopia-- one much more positive, one much more pure, than one that requires genocide in order to bring it about.

From the events that transpire in AT2, one of my biggest speculations about how the series will go has, I think, been confirmed. Simply put, the AT series is, overarchingly, about Mir. It's about one person's quest for a paradise.

Born the most powerful being in the world with a heart full of hope, she was pushed so far into negativity by human mistreatment that for a time she sought to tear the world in two in order to accomplish her dream of utopia. Yet eventually she overcomes this, and continues to work for a perfect world. For large parts of the first game, we've no idea that it's her story. She's not even named. But over the span of the first and second games we see that her plan for the world's future has shaped, underpinned and intertwined with a good portion of the events of the series so far, and that the individual struggles that happen along the way, while important, are also wholly dwarfed by the sheer scale of her plan. Metafalica is small beans to her; she doesn't, ultimately, have a huge investment in its happening. She's got bigger fish to fry, much bigger than Metafalica, much bigger than saving the people of an entire continent. She wants a paradise for the world.

In AT1, she is thwarted from making it, and ends up realising that her way is not the right way. In AT2, one is created, but it won't serve all the people of the world. In AT3, presumably, she plans to finally bring her world-renewal plot to fruition... and what a wonderful world it will surely be, better than either Metafalica or Reyvateilia could ever have been, exclusive of large parts of the world as they were.

Very few other stories to date have followed such an interesting character as Mir: a good-guy-turned-bad-guy-turned-good-guy-again who dreams on a much grander scale than most of the other characters can conceive of, and who, if the plot's focus on her is anything to go by, is likely to ultimately make her dream a reality. True utopias aren't often created in RPGs. Mir is one of the few characters who I believe could do it.

Turning away from Mir's grander dreams and towards her more immediate life plans, I did rather like her ending. It's full of all the same ambiguities and conditionalities that have characterised her Cosmosphere; she's constantly at pains to point out that she has a lot of reservations regarding ever being with a human, and that it may very well not work out long term. She's not willing to say forever. She's not even willing, even at the climactic moment, to say that she loves Croix. She's making it crystal clear, in case he had any doubts whatsoever, that things won't be easy for him and she won't go easy on him. The relationship is to be conducted entirely on her terms. I wouldn't expect any less from Mir, and I'm glad she was done justice here.

I also do particularly like that the way to her heart, ultimately, was through a song. This seems particularly fitting for Mir, who needs, perhaps, more than any of them, to be related to as a Reyvateil, to be approached on her own terms rather than forced into a human-normative mould regarding relationships. Croix, in the end, couldn't win her over with human gestures, human kindness. She'd seen in the past how fake such things could be. The only way he could persuade her was through the language that could speak to her on a core level, the language she knew could not lie; the language of song.

If any scene between the two of them was truly romantic, I think it was this one. It's a love story in which a human encounters an alien being, falls in love, and, at the climax, professes that love using the alien's own methods of communication, foreign as they are to him. I think this is important, because-- if you'll allow me to delve into film/literary criticism for a spell-- there are far too many stories in which the alien character, who in symbolic terms is representative of "the Other, people who are Not Us", eventually comes around to human, "normative" ways of thinking, and thus transcends their "lesser" alien nature and becomes acceptable as a being equal to the humans. The climactic moment of these stories, often, comes when the alien finally learns to do something humanlike that we see as endearing, such as hug or kiss or say "I love you".

Take WALL-E, for example, Pixar's latest blockbuster movie about robots in love. Even though neither of the main characters are human, or have reason to act in human ways, the climatic moment of romance comes when the more alien robot is able to imitate the more human-like robot. At first, she doesn't understand the meaning of holding hands; but WALL-E, who's watched human movies, teaches her that this sentiment is a great way to express her feelings. When she finally does so, abandoning her alien-like personality temporarily in exchange for a more human-normative one, we recognise this as a good thing, a beautiful, positive moment. She's changed. She's become more appealing to us-- because she's become more human.

Now, I rather liked WALL-E, don't get me wrong. I thought it had a lot of good feminist messages in it, for one thing. I'm just pointing out that this is a trope that's endemic to Hollywood, perhaps to our current understanding of narrative in general, and that it's not a particularly good thing. If the unfamiliar always has to become like the familiar before it can be seen as "good", that sends the message that those who aren't like most of us, those who seem strange and foreign and Other, must succumb to our way of thinking, to the normative, dominant culture, to be acceptable.

And so I liked AT2's twist on this message. All Croix's human words will not woo Jakuri, nor does she particularly want to be wooed. She's not eager to concede to him; she's not a savage looking to be made civilised. She's perfectly content to remain as she is, and she'll quite happily move on without him if he doesn't do something. He is the one who has to prove himself worthy of her, not the other way around. He is the one who has to change, to show that he understands her way of life, because she will not bow to him, not one inch.

So he sings to her, in Hymmnos. Because that's the language she understands best. Song is the energy that drives her life. She's not just a human with an install port; she's a Reyvateil, through and through, an utterly alien being. Croix will have to understand that if he wants to have any chance of building a life with her. And so he shows her that he does.

And while I'm still not convinced that any human is truly a good match for her, if Croix did anything, in the whole of the game, to prove that he comes anywhere even close to being potentially worthy of her-- to prove that he's even in the ball park-- it was that. And I liked that, because I wouldn't have wanted her to settle for anything less.

(It was a nice song, too.)

Also, note that I probably won't be updating Reyvablog until Monday, due to generally being busy with personal stuff (and having to work out precisely where the current plot arc is going). Expect the next post then. :)

Huntin', racin', and chasin' the wimmins

2009-02-04T13:03:00.000-08:00

So I decided that at some point I wanted to get a box shot of AT2 "in the wild", as it were, so I dropped by a GameStop while I was out yesterday to fire off a quick candid snap.

Sadly, it was on the top shelf, so I couldn't really get a great picture. It does, however, do a pretty good job of capturing all that's disappointing about the gaming scene these days. I'm not arguing that there aren't some great, fun, innovative new games being released, or that the games industry has completely sold out to the lowest common denominator, or something. It's just a particularly unpleasant spread, all said and done. AT2, with its "revamped", super-sultry NA box cover specifically designed to grab the hormonal adolescent's attention, sitting next to: a compilation of a series of racing games famed for their emphasis on reckless driving and spectacular, explosive crashes; the "Worlds (sic) Number 1 Hunting Games" (a double dose of macho, clearly: nothing like blatant disregard for the sanctity of life and the sanctity of grammar all in one package!); and a display box crudely enticing you to "cash in on your past conquests". Never before have I seen such a comprehensive example of how certain sectors of the games industry love to sell the idea back to gamers that they should think with their testosterone (because only men game, of course), not with their heads.

I'm not saying all of the things seen here are bad, and I don't think any of them are deliberately placed, or anything. The "cash in on your past conquests" boxes are all over the place, though that doesn't make them any more revolting (and the positioning next to AT2 is unfortunate); they're a slur against responsible relationship practice (and, given the male-targeted nature of most games advertising, almost certainly a slur against women) and a slur against seeing videogames as anything more than "conquests" all at the same time. (What happened to the idea that both one's relationship with a person and one's relationship with a videogame are precious things to treasure and carefully uphold, not to merely "trade in" the minute something new comes along?) And I admit to having played some of the Burnout games, and they're mindless fun in a cathartic sort of way; I don't think they're horribly amoral, or anything, especially since the emphasis is on blowing up machines and enjoying the explosive fallout, not thinking of them as containing actual people. Just, like I said, it's a sad spread. And I didn't really notice until I looked at the picture at home. It's an interesting snapshot to have captured of a certain trend in gaming in 2009, I guess.

Cosmospherical reflections

2009-02-02T10:53:00.000-08:00

Spoilers for Jakuri's Cosmosphere, up to and including level 9, in the blacked-out text.

...So apparently Jakuri's dream is "all you can eat pancakes". In honour of this, we went out for pancakes the other day; they weren't supposed to be the all-you-can-eat variety, but in practice the servings were so large that a regular one ended up being all we could eat and then some, so there were leftovers for breakfast the next day too. Mmmmm, IHOP.

I've now cleared Jakuri's Cosmosphere-- with aquagon being an invaluable help in my quest to heal her heart, as I ran into sticking problems with acquiring several of the talk topics-- and I have to say that I'm surprised at how much I got right about her, in my reflections and in my various writings. I was pretty sure that most of the stuff I wrote about in the AT Whistleblower was going to be blown out of the water by canon, but they're really pretty compatible, and some of the coincidences regarding minor details I'd imagined being present in her Cosmosphere are downright spooky. It's heartening to see that I really have understood her, in some ways, all along.

I was also pleased to see the game acknowledge that she'd still have some reservations towards even a human who'd cleared her Cosmosphere. She couldn't bring herself to hug Croix at the end, nor could she guarantee that there wouldn't be times when she'd be angry at him for being what he was, when just seeing his face would remind her of all she'd been through and upset her. I thought that was a fairly realistic depiction of the troubles any relationship between her and a human would face, all said. I didn't feel like they forced her into being too OOCly fluffy in order to pair her up with Croix, which was my main concern; I felt like in AT1 the characters were often warped out of proportion and made to concede points they wouldn't concede so that they could be more amenable to a relationship with Lyner, and I feel like that happened a lot less here (probably in part since for the vast majority of people to consider a relationship with Lyner you'd have to warp them pretty badly out of character).

That said, there are a few things I would have liked to have seen in there that I didn't. For one thing, I wanted to know more about precisely what happened during her rebellion; what that was like for her, what she felt about fighting a war in which countless people died. Not just her guilt and her struggle to accept herself afterwards, but what, exactly, the experience was like at the time. I think I also wanted to know more about what humans were using her for exactly; we get hints that she was being used as a weapon against the rebelling Reyvateils, but I'd like to have heard more about that.

It would have been nice if Harmonious had got to be a spell, too, but that's kind of wishful thinking. XP

More thoughts on this later once I've digested the whole game, perhaps.

Also, if you're following the Reyvablog, you'll probably want to check today's post, as the plot is moving on in quite a surprising direction....

I reserve the right to call a hack a hack.

2009-01-28T11:04:00.001-08:00

One thing that's been disconcerting me about the recent bug-addled, typo-riddled release of AT2 is the number of people in the "non-core" fandom-- i.e. those who frequent the GameFAQs and other such forums, but don't actually participate in AT-only fan spaces-- who've been calling out the core fans for complaining about the errors, accusing them of acting "too entitled" and "looking a gift horse in the mouth".

This winds me up for a couple of reasons. Firstly, AT2 was not a "gift horse". It was a $40 game. Gamers are no different from other consumers in that they have a right to protest a product they've paid for if they don't find it to be satisfactory. Complaining at the creators of a fan translation, who've done the job solely out of the goodness of their own hearts and on their own time, is more of a quandary; you're perfectly within your right to state your dislike, though it's also hard to argue that a fan owes any more of their time to a project than they're willing to put in.

That said, one expects that if someone's going to put in the effort to see a translation project through to completion, fan or no, it's respectful of the game-- and sensible, with regards to how much more effort it takes proportionally to output a polished translation versus an unpolished one-- to release something at least half-decent. And even if it's not exactly fair to demand that a fan should have spent more time on the game, I feel one is within their right to boycott the translation, to suggest other people boycott the translation, and to generally express disapproval of it if you find it not to do justice to the game.

Which brings me to my second point: I not only don't accept this level of localisation quality from a company whose job it is to do this-- I wouldn't accept it from a fanwork. I would have reservations about recommending a fanfic that demonstrates this level of proofreading and grammatical competence. I don't think that means I hold fanfics to unreasonable standards. I don't think that makes me arrogant. I think that means I feel that whether sentence construction has had care and attention paid to it or whether it's spilt out onto the page like a drunken IM conversation makes a difference to the experience of a story.

Stories are better when they're well-written. I want to read, and recommend, well-written amateur fiction. I expect to read well-written professional fiction. I shouldn't be expected, when I come across a badly-told story, to say "well, at least we got the story" and leave it at that. I am grateful we got the story; stories, no matter how awkwardly told, are things worth having in this world. I think it's a positive that Ar Tonelico 2 exists as it does. I just think it could have been cared for more by those who brought it over, and I don't think I'm remiss in pointing out that it's not as good as it could have been, by a long shot.

And for those who'd protest the typo-filled translation of a book but think we're getting too worked up about something that's "just a videogame": in Shakespeare's time, plays were considered popular entertainment for the masses. When the modern novel was first invented it was seen as a cheap form of entertainment not befitting the upper class. Art forms are generally only respected in retrospect. That doesn't mean you can't use your brain, examine history, and get a head start.

interesting townsperson dialogue in AT2

2009-01-27T13:17:00.000-08:00

(Overheard)

Sacred Army Knight: I want to marry her.
Noble Lady: We don't want to mix the blood of Reyvateil in our family, you know?
Sacred Army Knight: Don't treat her like a fool! You don't even know if Reyvateil is hereditary.
Noble Lady: We're a royal family. I just don't want people to know...
Noble Lady: I know Reyvateils are very intelligent people. I know... but...
Sacred Army Knight: Intelligence is all that matters now. Royalty doesn't matter!
Sacred Army Knight: What is so bad about being with someone I fight with...
Noble Lady: I'm just worried about you.

(When spoken to)
Sacred Army Knight: Reyvateil partners are very important to us.
Noble Lady: My son hasn't gotten promoted yet. Maybe there is a problem with his Reyvateil partner.

I just thought this was terribly interesting in that it's a little snapshot into the prejudices inherent in society in that world, even in the supposedly tolerant Metafalss....

reyvateil rights filks

2009-01-26T09:36:00.001-08:00

So we were driving in the car listening to "Mr. Roboto" and being very amused by how well it correlates with certain happenings in AT2, and... well, this happened.

Domo arigatou, Madame Roboto
Mata o-hima de--
Domo arigatou, Madame Roboto
Himitsu o shiritai.

You're wondering who I am, (Secret, secret, I've got a secret)
Machine or deadly rage, (Secret, secret, I've got a secret)
With parts made in Japan, (Secret, secret, I've got a secret)
I am the modern mage!

I've got a secret I've been hiding under my skin.
My heart is loving, my blood electric, my brain is /bin.
So if you see me acting strangely, don't be surprised.
I'm just a girl who needed someone and some kind of faith,
To keep my heart safe. Just keep my heart safe,
Some kind of faith, to keep my heart safe.

I'm not a robot without emotions; I'm not what you see.
I've come to help you with your problems so we can be free.
I'm not a killer, I'm not a loony, forget what you know.
I'm just a girl whose circumstances were beyond her control.
Beyond my control. We all need control...
I need control. We all need control,

I am the modern dame, (Secret secret, I've got a secret)
And hide with a new name, (Secret secret, I've got a secret)
So no one else can see (Secret secret, I've got a secret)
My true identity.

Domo arigatou, Madame Roboto.
Domo. Domo.
Domo arigatou, Madame Roboto.
Domo. Domo.
Domo arigatou, Madame Roboto.
Domo arigatou, Madame Roboto.
Domo arigatou, Madame Roboto.
Domo arigatou, Madame Roboto.
Thank you very much, Madame Roboto,
For helping the girls nobody cared for.
And thank you very much, Madame Roboto,
For helping me escape just when I needed to.
Thank you!
Thank you, thank you!
I wanna thank you.
Please, thank you!

The problem's plain to see:
Abused technology.
Machines that feel things too,
Please treat them like they do.

The time has come at last (Secret, secret, I've got a secret)
To throw away this mask. (Secret, secret, I've got a secret)
Now everyone can see (Secret, secret, I've got a secret)
My true identity!

I'm Mir! Mir! Mir! Mir.

AT2: first impressions

2009-01-21T13:32:00.000-08:00

Back online! There's a new post over at the Reyvablog, too; don't miss it, as Important Things are beginning to go down.

Around 9 hours into AT2, here's a quick analysis of Notable Things So Far, in plus-and-minus format:

+ Red curled-up flower buds and red birds in the intro. Symbolic of Jakuri, given that red, flowers and birds are the central motifs of her songs? I thought that was a nice touch: she's too spoilery to show explicitly, but she's important enough to the plot that she needs to be symbolically included....

+ Jakuri is, incidentally, being translated as Jacqli, not Jaclyn. We can all put that terrible, traumatic moment behind us. HUZZAH. Not that I'm hugely big on its being translated as Jacqli, but out of anything they could have rendered it as short of, well, Jakuri, it's the least uncomfortable to my mind.

+ Musume Power(ed) is being translated as Girl Power, which... makes perfect sense. It's not "Hymn Code". DOUBLE HUZZAH.

- The dialogue is full of horrible, horrible grammar errors. It's really not that different from the first game's in that respect, but still.

+ The innuendo is... present, and I guess you could say there's more of it? But it doesn't feel like it's distracting from the story, or actually mangling the characters. There were points in AT1 when I thought "that character wouldn't speak so bluntly"; I'm not getting that feel from AT2, partly because Chroche is the tsundere to sunder all tsundere and Luca is pretty cheerfully open. So that may be a facet more of the fact that no one's really much of a wallflower than of good translation, but still, I felt what's been there so far has been reasonably within the parameters of what the characters would say.

+ Croix is MATURE. Thank Deity. Okay, so I already kind of knew that, but I'm still pleased with how they've pulled it off.

+ The use of Hymmnos writing everywhere? Simply adorable, and makes the game feel appropriately otherworldly.

+ (Mild setting spoilers) I was really pleasantly surprised at how many of the ideas I'd come up with for the Reyvablog were echoed in this game's setting. I never expected to see the series portray actual Reyvateil slums; I've always thought the ideas I was playing with in that regard were just a little bit darker than the series' scope would normally take in, but no, there are slums filled with dying, cynical, confused Reyvateils. I'm... impressed by how right I actually got it.

AT2 box shots, for the curious....

2009-01-17T14:36:00.002-08:00

Front of the box.

Back of the box.

Just in case you're curious as to the exact packaging design, or weren't convinced it was for reals. :)

Express ticket to Metafalss!

2009-01-17T11:10:00.000-08:00

Already posted on the forums about this, but still, something this momentous is worth mentioning twice: there are officially copies of AT2 at a Residence Near* Me.

I won't actually get to touch until tomorrow, but we will nevertheless be playing AT2 before it hits game stores. Don't expect a first report immediately, because I'll lack internet for a few days, but rest secure (or envious, or something) in the knowledge that someone, somewhere in the world, will be playing AT2 in English.

Now all I need to do is pray the translation doesn't fail. Or rather, pray it doesn't fail that badly; I think the chances of its not actually failing in any way are pretty darn slim.

Still, right now, I'm having a hard time feeling too down about that, because omgeleventyone!!4w#$!AT2!115! ...and I should really fix myself some food before I fall over.

Also, while I was posting this, a Left Behind Friday just happened. I think I may possibly die of stuff overload now.

*for transatlantic values of "near"

We're almost there....

2009-01-17T08:09:00.000-08:00

Three days until The Big One, and it's going to pass pretty quickly for me; I'm going to be spending pretty much all of the 18th in transit, as I'm winging my way over to the States to meet AT2's release, and the inauguration of America's awesome new president, head on. Being with people you care about only make the time go by that much faster, too, albeit I wish it didn't.

I intend to keep up Reyvablog while I'm gone, but it's probably going to be a bit slow going; after my update today, expect to see new updates around the 20th, assuming I have an internets by then (I'll hopefully have it around the 19th or 20th, but it's not guaranteed). --and yes, I understand if on the 20th a lot of you are doing something else, but still. XD I'll try to keep to an update schedule of every three days or so, but we'll see how it goes.

Sorry if I'm a bit scarce in person during this auspicious time, but I do wish you all a wonderful AT2 experience. Here's hoping that NISA have kept the soul of the game intact.

It's been a long haul, and I'm happy to have seen it all through with you. Now little remains to be said but this: onwards, and upwards, to Metafalss!

First "official" Reyvablog photoshoot, and a bit of worldbuilding....

2009-01-16T09:48:00.000-08:00

So I did say, a while back, that there'd be more SL photos of the Reyvablog avatars, this time in their home environments as opposed to a studio setting. I hold to that promise, bringing you a selection of photos from the first of our shoots, focusing in on dhezeall, heartofharmony, and neonsunray.

briyante's pics are coming soonish, as well as more from dhezeall and heartofharmony, and we should be close to being able to put AR's avatar together. polyhymnia is a little further away, but eventually we'll get her put together too.

Commuter transit is pretty tiring for dhezeall.... especially when fellow passengers keep giving her the eye.

Still, breaks in the noise and the hubbub afford opportunities to relax, as well as time for a couple of portraits.

heartofharmony looks to the Goddesses, amidst dazzling church architecture. Such places can inspire a sense of serenity even in those spirits they hold captive.

Sadly, she remains elusively hard to photograph, but we got a couple of candid shots.

neonsunray relaxes at her favourite song parlour, letting herself get caught up in the music.

Coming across a giant piano, she takes a little time out to indulge in symbolism, truly embracing her nature.

Shadowed in the doorway of the song parlour, she tries to stay discreet.

Letting go of her shyness a little, she strikes a pose.

As she leaves for home, we find her pausing momentarily to look to a starlit sky, dreaming of hope.

And now, a little world info....

The song parlours neonsunray attends are a cross between cosy lounges and karaoke establishments, with private rooms for small groups of friends and slightly larger, public areas for ad hoc socialising. The public areas generally feature a small stage, surrounded by long couches all pushed together so people can recline on them, and little else; there's not usually space to dance, and people don't tend to do so, although they may stand up and join in with the singers on stage, or sway to the music. The experience is about listening to people sing, taking your turn, and joining in with the harmonies, as well as feeling emotionally conected to the music and to each other.

Though song parlours are quasi-infamous among humans for being hotbeds of promiscuity, the interactions that go on in these places are rarely, if ever, sexual. United by the music, many choose to relax their personal boundaries or let go of them altogether, but the intimacy that results is more of a relaxed, liberated openness of being than a frenzy of passions. People will curl up in each other's laps, lean against each other, snuggle and stroke each other's hair and faces, but their actions are expressions not of physical desire but of the comfortable closeness they feel as the harmonics of the group blend and align. As with all fond interactions between people, occasionally this bonding will lead to physical attraction, but the song parlour isn't considered an appropriate place to indulge these sorts of feelings. They're really a lot more like musical cuddle parties, with the added benefit of the participants being able to experience deep emotional closeness through their magic.

Generally, people tend to come out of these events feeling warm, happy, refreshed, and released from their tensions and distractions. Being around people who, through harmonics, you feel instinctively fond towards, safe around, and happy to share your feelings with is a deeply therapeutic experience for many; it's possible to relax with the people at a song parlour in ways that many people don't get to in all of their daily lives. And while song parlours aren't sexual venues, a lot of Reyvateils who attend them find that relationships with humans feel awkward and stilted afterwards, devoid of that instinctive emotional connection, and find themselves drawn more towards relationships with others of their kind.

Due to the increased need for emotional bonding that presence at these venues can awaken in people, they've been blamed for causing an addiction to diving in some Reyvateils, though others argue that someone liable to be addicted to diving will become that way through diving alone. A diving addiction can be dangerous, as the Reyvateil will often push her partner to explore deeper and deeper levels in which the Reyvateil's, and diver's, subconscious minds are at great risk of damage, and may forgo caution on these levels in order to seek a more intense experience.

A moment of reflection

2009-01-14T14:33:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, like all virtual worlds, Second Life is more than a game.

I can't remember how I found it, but I stumbled across this memorial in SL recently, for those transgendered people who've been victims of hate crimes or have committed suicide as the result of the conflict between what they are inside and what society says they should want to be.

For those of you who don't have SL, I took a screenshot to show you what it's like. I think this memorial was a pretty fitting place for my Mir avatar to be; I think this declaration, displayed on the wall and reprinted here for those who can't read it, is something she could easily have spoken:

For the fallen, I will stand. I will stand to oppose bigotry, fear and hatred. I will stand to educate the ignorant. I will stand for any who suffer. I will stand for the unknown soul, facing the harshest of realities, struggling against the worst of odds, trying to remain sane in a world that neither accepts nor understands. You may have been raped, beaten, shot, stabbed and scarred, your mind, body and soul ravaged by the harshest cruelties of both man and nature. Be you live or dead, may you always find peace and comfort within these walls.

- A Monument -
To the Inhumanity of Humankind

This is what Mir is about. This is what I'm about. And yes, I cross it over with my fandoms. It'd be a poor thing if I abandoned my awareness of what I think is right and good for the sake of participating in a fandom, after all.

Reyvateil Rights Carnival!

2009-01-13T21:44:00.000-08:00

So occasionally I find myself Googling the terms "Reyvateil rights", just to see if anyone else has put anything out there. I suppose it's a combination of hoping other people will have put forth their views on these things, because I like reading about how others interpret these concepts, and wanting there to be more representation out there of the idea because I think a work like Ar Tonelico invites it, to the point where it's almost criminal not to discuss the issues it raises. Inevitably, I only find my own work; the term, in quotes, brings up five results at current, covering my three blogs.

I'd like that to change. AT2's release is almost upon us: seven days away, almost six. January 20th is a day when many of us will unite in hope, in solidarity, as we work towards making Ar Ciel, and hopefully this world too, a better place to be.

So why is no one talking about the issues of sexism and speciesism raised by AT's world? Why is no one writing fiction, writing essays, creating art, that addresses the problems Reyvateils face in Sol Ciel? Crucially, why are the only people attacking AT on the grounds of sexism those who dislike the series for it, instead of seeing it as a flaw but the characters and world as still worthwhile, and something we should strive to explore, strive to better, through art?

I'd like to challenge you all to a little something. Between now and AT2's release, I'd like to see you write something, or draw something, or create something, on the subject of Reyvateil rights. Even if you only post in your blog about it, I'd like to hear more said on this topic. (Exceptions made for those who are having huge moving-type upheavals this month; you can submit something at a later date, or just count Reyvablog postings. :)

If you don't have a blog, feel free to post submissions in this comment thread, although I'd ideally like to see the content distributed across a number of sites.

Reyvablog avatars!

2009-01-07T12:34:00.000-08:00

So, for the last few days now we've been working on a little project over here: constructing avatars of the Reyvablog cast in Second Life! Unfortunately we probably can't do everyone's character, since we don't have as detailed an awareness of what everyone else looks like as we do of our own characters and because of the necessity of buying items every tweak and modification costs money, so unless you're willing to pay and provide a really good description (and we can find Teru tails and horns), there probably won't be any, say, winters avatars coming along soon. But at the very least, you can get an exclusive OOC glimpse at the faces behind the words of a few of our regular commenters.

dhezeall sticks it to The Man by refusing to pose in anything other than her lounging-around-the-house clothes.

Unfortunately, it was hard to get a good shot of heartofharmony; she was too shy to look into the camera much.

neonsunray is ready to face the day.

In a society that hates what you are, even little expressions of your self can be dangerous....

These avatars aren't really finished-- dhezeall needs better eyes (she's wearing temporary eyes that were Photoshopped at the moment because the ones we bought for her didn't fit her face), we'll probably acquire more clothes for her and neonsunray as well as generally poking at various tweaks until we have everyone down exactly right, and we'll be doing photoshoots with them in more realistic settings (and poses). Plus, we've yet to put together AR's avatar, but rest assured that she'll be around soon too. Still, for now, enjoy the preview of our work to come!

Aaaah!

2009-01-06T14:20:00.000-08:00

A friend sent a Second Life screenshot to me with the following caption: Omg, a scary weird-looking version of Mir has hacked into Aurica's brain and kidnapped Don Leon!

...and that really is exactly what this looks like. (Warning: this image may disturb you if you're a Mir fan who doesn't like seeing messed-up-looking images of characters you like.) I know it's not actually Don Leon, and it's probably not actually someone trying to be Mir, but still, the similarities in the whole composition of the image are just unsettling.

For comparison and comfort, here's my version of Mir all decked out in kimono.

A very Ar Tonelico Christmas, and a hopeful New Year!

2009-01-02T09:34:00.000-08:00

First up, letting you guys know that the Angry Reyvateil is back up and posting for the New Year! Do share your holiday stories in the current threads if you can; I'd like to base my characters' awareness of what things are like in Tenba and the Church over the holidays on your characters' reflections.

So despite the lack of AT2 this December, we still managed to have a pretty Ar Tonelico-esque Christmas over here. For your enjoyment, I present pictures of the highlights. :)

This snow-Teru might interest IC-winters. With a few twists of the foil, even an ordinary chocolate snowman can become an AT cameo! Comes with hat, too.

At Borders, we found this packet of strangely Pom-like Japanese treats.

The packaging bears pictures of all of the possible designs, including this musical Pom... Reyvapom!

Unfortunately, there aren't actually any candies decorated with "Other".

And last, but most certainly not least... someone brought a pair of tiny kittens over to the house. One in particular had a fairly familiar-looking expression on her face, and I ended up spontaneously nicknaming her Wrathface. Totally makes me want a black cat called Jakuri (who I would then also nickname Wrathface, because I've decided the word amuses me more than just about anything else in the world). This one's actually called Spooky, but... c'mon, who names a cat "Spooky"? So generic. You know that cat would make the best Jakuri-cat evar.

So now we've officially rung in a brand new year, and all that remains is to wait out these final three weeks-- less, actually!-- until the shores of Metafalss finally loom in sight. The release of a game such as this one is always a time of hope: a time of anticipating the new worlds and new wonders that will unfold before our eyes, the people we'll meet and take into our hearts for a time, the lessons we'll take away, and hoping that they will become truly beloved. Many of us know at least a little of what's coming, but who can truly say what will end up impacting us the most? What things will we learn, and how will this experience strengthen and enrich us? There's a lot to wonder about, a lot to hope for-- and in such a place as Ar Ciel, in particular, hope is one thing we can expect to find in abundance. We can even wash down release day with an extra helping of hope; as the first day of AT2's US release draws to a close, so will we also have seen Obama's first day in the US presidential office. No matter where in the world (or universe) you're from, this is the dawning of a new era, on many levels.

January 20 will bring us, I believe, a great deal of hope. Let's all take a little time to reflect on that, when the day does come.

Amazon.com knows my tastes....

2008-12-29T08:53:00.000-08:00

I was rather amused to receive this in my inbox this morning. Amazon's product recommendations aren't usually that on the ball, especially since I use Amazon infrequently enough that they're often in relation to things I decided sounded like a good idea several years ago, but this accuracy was a pleasant surprise, even if they're a bit late to earn my custom.

"Accuracy", however, isn't the best term for the rest of this article. "The highly anticipated simulation RPG"-- I don't think that's exactly what "dating sim" refers to-- "is returning to the PS2 promising its cult followers"-- don't they mean the game has a "cult following"? I'm not sure Ar Tonelico fandom generally requires obscure rituals and obedience to a charismatic leader-- "more gameplay, features and innuendos." Innuendos? Plural? And what about, oh, say, the music? I suppose that's counted under "features".

Oh, no, wait:

"See more in PlayStation 2 > Rhythm > Singing & Karaoke Games"

At least they did recognise that there's music in it, I suppose.

The Flesh Fair -- Ar Tonelico fanfiction (Reyvablog canon, 1,459 words, violence, disturbing themes)

2008-12-28T09:39:00.000-08:00

Warning: this is a harsh story. I hadn't originally intended to post it online, for a variety of reasons; for one, it's a very dark piece, and I think I had internalised the idea, from my works in the other fandom that I write in, that my "mission", of sorts, in writing was to counterbalance the excessive darkness and aggression that seems to be popular in fandom.

However, I've realised after some thought that what I was actually doing in my other fandom was writing the untold stories of that world: where others only wrote of darkness, I tried to illustrate that there was a lighter side to be seen in that world that few people considered. Ar Tonelico's world, on the other hand, is one in which people often celebrate the Reyvateils, but few reflect on the sufferings such an imbalanced caste system as is found in Sol Ciel would produce for this race of people. Again, I am attempting to tell, I suppose, the stories less told; to lighten the path less followed, in order to help people see both sides of the world.

Knowing that this is the path I seem to be on as a fanfic writer, I'm now more comfortable posting the story.

It's told from the perspective of the Angry Reyvateil, the in-character author of Falling Through the Generation Gap.

---

Down at the border of the worst part of town, where the poorest of human habitations bleed over into the Reyvateil slums, there used to be a horrible little hangout that called itself the Flesh Fair. Its crowd was invariably drawn from the dregs of the human gene pool, grubby-fingered louts with table manners almost as crude as their vocabularies, the edge only taken off their thuggishness by drink, and in a few cases exascerbated by it instead. The walls inside looked like they hadn't seen fresh paint in decades, a fact poorly hidden by the demeaning centrefolds that dotted the walls here and there; I suspected the place probably used to be a squat, bought out on the cheap or still being occupied illegally in a sector all but ignored by the law. I'd pass by it almost every day on the way to work, wanting so badly to turn away from its graffiti-sprayed exterior and its obscene decor, but unable to keep from staring inwards at the horror and the shame.

A hand-scrawled sign upon the door forbade entry to any Reyvateil, and just in case they couldn't read a constant harsh noise blared over the speaker system, a parody of song distorted and screeching enough to set the teeth of even human passers-by on edge, yet which amazingly did not seem to bother their clientele. Even without the music, no Reyvateil would have been at ease in the place; the main attraction of the Flesh Fair was its reputation as a gathering place for anti-Reyvateil extremists, and from what I could pick out from amidst the cacophony, a full ninety per cent of the conversation that went on there involved the discussion, in savage detail, of what vengeance should be enacted upon the members of our species.

I would have been able to turn away, if not for one thing. The bartenders were a trio of girls, two of them as animatedly vulgar as the rest, but the third as visibly broken a spirit as I have ever seen. She kept her eyes to the floor, her movements skittish, her muscles held rigid in fear. Her lank, mousy hair and grease-smudged skin always looked like they hadn't been washed in days, and the resilient beauty of her face shone through a lumpy mass of scars. I'd seen her get them, watched frozen in shock as a customer smashed her face in with a glass, to the jeering approval of the crowd; she had crumpled to the ground, twisting in on herself, and while I couldn't hear the voice that rose up from inside I saw the light that touched her wounds and knit together the raw edges of her skin.

She was the manager's Reyvateil, and every night he paraded her before this vicious crowd so they could mock her, spit on her, scream in her face. And yet still she was kind to them, as kind as she could be through the terror, probably in part because she feared worse if she stepped out of line, but also because she was what she was. One night I was working particularly late, and I saw the shutters of the place rolled down, rattling with the relentless drone of the sound system. From the painful cries that easily pierced the din, I could tell this establishment's idea of a private party involved no relaxation of that cruelty.

And then one evening, I saw the shutters down well before normal closing hours. The instinctive tension that would grip me when I passed petered out as I realised the speakers weren't on. The next day, and the next, presented me with the same sight: a crumbling, lifeless little haunt that now neatly matched its neighbours. The feel of the place still sickened, its aura of bad intent clinging to the skin like a film, but at least the screams had stopped.

I wondered what became of her, dimly, as I trudged on to work. Did her heart finally collapse under the strain of their hatred? Did they beat their star attraction to death, and then disperse, unsure what to do with themselves now that they'd consummated the act for which they'd hungered so long?

As the mazy back streets led me further into the slums, I felt a tug on the hem of my skirt, a weak one. I was used to this; these streets crawled with the homeless as lesser slums crawled with rats. I never had money for them, but still, I always looked down. Sometimes, the smile of someone who didn't see you as living waste was all it took to put some lightness in your heart.

I saw blue eyes staring back at me, through a mask of familiar scars.

"You used to work at the Flesh Fair, didn't you?"

"I left," she said, averting her eyes as if the very mention of it shamed her. It probably did, I thought, cursing myself silently. Those two words, their tone, their feel, carried volumes of information to my intuition. I left, with purpose. I timed my leaving. I wanted him to know I'd rather walk out to die than live on like this.

I took a seat on the steps beside her. Screw my client, no pun intended; he could wait another five minutes. "I'm sorry. I can't do anything to help you... I live hand-to-mouth as it is."

"It's okay," she said, and there was almost a little humour in her voice; a light, delicate undercurrent that warmed her words from the inside. Goddesses, but her song must have been beautiful, back when she was whole. "Everyone does."

After a moment in which neither of us spoke, she continued on. "It's strange... it must be because I'm dying, but these days, I almost feel like it's... singing to me." Her eyes were focused far in the distance, and I followed her gaze. "The Tower?" I said.

She nodded. "I feel... a warmth coming from it that I never knew before. I wonder if that's where we go... back to the Binary Field." She turned to look at me, a wan smile on her face. "She lives there... doesn't she?"

"She?"

"Sometimes, I think I see her... out of the corner of my eye. I think she comes for us, you know, when we die. She gave herself for us, let herself be sealed away... and even though she can't help us in life any more, maybe she protects us now...."

I didn't know where Mir was these days, to be honest. I'd heard a lot about viruses emerging up in the Tower, about a year ago, and then as quickly as it started the news dropped dead. But I wasn't going to voice those doubts, not to this poor girl, who only had that hope to cling to; and besides, in a way, I still clung to it too. It wasn't about where Mir was or wasn't, ultimately. It was about what she represented: hope, for all of us, that there could be a better world, a place where humans wouldn't punish us simply for being what we were. A place where we could be free. I still believed in that.

I reached inside my shirt and pulled out the small disc I always wore around my neck, concealed. It was a simple thing, marked with an abstract design in red and black; no one who did not know the colour convention would know what it was, but its subtlety was part of its charm. One who held Mir in high esteem, after all, had to take a certain rebellious pride in keeping it secret, or else be weighed down beneath the burden of the subterfuge.

Carefully, I slipped the cord over her head. I could make another.

"You need this more than I do, right now," I said. "May it guard your steps."

She cradled it in the palm of her hand, tracing one finger over the design. "I don't think I'll be doing much stepping... any more," she said, with that same wry humour.

"Then your steps wherever the world beyond may take you," I said softly, squeezing her shoulder as I got to my feet.

I left her looking at it, seemingly lost in the fascination of the simple pattern. It was one of the signs, I knew, the tendency to get caught up in language, in structure, in geometric designs. Perhaps it was the universal rhythm of the Tower calling us home.

I glanced towards the structure, faint beyond the dusty haze of the street. I released a silent prayer into the Binary Field, and for a moment, held my breath; then turned away into the choking air and the night.

Cover those covers, NISA/A hiatus for the rest of us....

2008-12-22T06:01:00.000-08:00

(All images in this post are safe for work, despite descriptions.)

So over at the Reyvateil's Melody forums, LOKFanatic put together a side-by-side comparison of the Japanese and American box art for various NISA-released GUST games.

To be honest, I'd quite forgotten that AT1 had had a different cover, and to see the comparisons illustrated so starkly kind of shocked me. I think I'd subconsciously believed that we were past the days when covers were routinely changed for the American market, even though in practice I know things like the Final Fantasies get different covers (and I'm still not entirely sure why). The anime style of art and the Japanese aesthetic in general is so widely recognised amongst gamers now, and in fact beloved for its charm, that monstrosities like these unfortunate localised covers are looked upon as quaint relics of a less culturally aware era. Given that, I'm honestly not sure I see a need for revised covers. Isn't it just more expense on the developers' part?

Moreover, the aesthetic appeal of the Japanese designs aside, I'm troubled by the assumptions the changed covers seem to make about the two cultures. The Japanese covers for both AT1 and 2 prominently feature the female characters, who are of course the stars of the story, looking non-sexualised and in control. Sure, Chroche has got a bit of cleavage going on, but that's just her outfit in general; she looks composed and refined, not like she's posing for the cover of the Metafalss edition of Hustler. The emphasis is on the women, but not in a degrading way, so as to objectify them; rather, it's on them as the most important people on the box. They look like the protagonists, basically, not sidekick material: AT1 is obviously Aurica and Misha's game, just as AT2 is obviously Chroche and Luca's~~, even though we all know it's totally Jakuri's~~.

Contrast with the American covers. AT1's wasn't too awful, and the first release was pink, which is quite a novelty amongst games not aimed at little girls, although it probably did put a lot of people off the game and definitely gendered the content. The original looked like a game that anyone might want to play; the American cover appealed to a niche, which is a counterproductive marketing strategy if ever I saw one. The biggest problem with it, though, is that the female characters have been pushed to the back. The message is clear: this game is about a guy with a sword and his singing, alluring female cohorts!

AT2's cover, however... ugh. Not only is the guy with the pointy thing in front again, but the background image is of the main female protagonists practically making out, and looking kind of nervous and vulnerable (well, okay, Chroche does) while they do so. The message here is clearer still: this game is about a guy with a sword and his two vaguely homoerotic female cohorts! Now, I have absolutely no problem with gayness in my games-- I'm bi myself, and it's always nice to see games that feature a wide spread of sexualities-- but this isn't about fair representation of lesbians, especially since I'm pretty sure from what I've heard (don't confirm/deny/spoil in comments, people!) that Chroche and Luca aren't actually together in the game. This is about putting female eroticism on the cover of a game so it will sell to men who want to look at that sort of thing. And, you know, that's not bad as such. There's nothing wrong with men who like looking at pretty girls. But save it for the artbook; placing it on the cover distorts the image of what the game's about. Ar Tonelico is about much more than thinly veiled sexuality, and selling the game like this cheapens it, as well as reducing the female characters to objects to be gazed upon, not people in their own right. If there's anyone out there you think needs a quick example of what objectification is, link them to this post: I think it's as good an example of the difference between presenting a person as a person, a being capable of independent agency, and presenting them as an object, a thing to be observed and enjoyed with the eyes with their own will seen as secondary, as you'll find.

The big problem I have with these covers is what they say about what games companies think of American fans. They assume the American gamer market is so crude, so adolescent, and, most galling of all, so overwhelmingly male, that they a) won't buy a game that has women shown as key characters in their own right, rather than sex objects, and b) would buy a game with two girls fawning all over each other on the cover over a game that seems to be a pretty, tasteful-looking RPG. Those are two awful assumptions to make about America, especially in contrast to Japan-- "the Japanese may like the tasteful stuff, but here in the good ol' U. S. of A., we want boobs! None of this fancy cherry-blossom-haiku-tea-ceremony stuff for us, no sir!"-- and, in light of the controversy over name localisations and NISA's recent commentary in press release that "the American market is different, and we have to cater to it", really makes it seem like they think the American market is stupid. Those durned Amerikkuns, they hate Japanese names in games, and they hate pretty, delicate things! That's right: the portion of the American market that plays games like Ar Tonelico seriously hates, you know, pretty fantasy worlds and those ker-ray-zee Japanese names. Yep. We hate it. We're just here for the Reyva-tail.

Uh.

Please meditate upon this link, NISA. Come back to us when you're done. (Warning: music and Flash, for those of you at work. Just check the URL.)

I'm buying AT2 because I want to play it in English, on release day. Furthermore, I want to support NISA over the fact that AT2 is being released here at all, and hopefully get AT3 released as well. So I'm giving them my money. But it's a dilemma, because honestly, I don't like the thought of supporting companies that pull this sort of stunt. At the risk of sounding elitist here, the AT series has been stated by some of the developers to be their life's work. Sure, it has innuendo, but that's not the main attraction; you can see that in the multiple 250-page books that have been released detailing every aspect of the world's history, technology and magicology that barely say a peep about the characters as sex symbols. Turning the characters of this carefully constructed fantasy into cheap tricks to sell games to your perceived market of Dumb Horny Amerikkuns is not okay, okay?

In conclusion: when a country like Japan, notorious for its objectification of the female figure and general lack of feminism, does a far better job than the American distros of presenting its female characters as characters in their own right rather than bits of fluff attached to the male protagonist, you know someone, somewhere, is seriously doing it wrong.

In other news, $INSERT_WINTER_HOLIDAY_HERE is almost upon us, and I'm off to spend it with one awesome individual, several rather less tolerable individuals, and a NEW TINYKITN as of tomorrow. My internet access is going to be minimal, most likely, so don't expect posts from me on this blog or the forums from the 23rd until New Year's; the Reyvablog will also be going on a hiatus until January 1st, which, given timezone crossing and need to recover from jetlag, will in practice probably work out at around the 2nd or 3rd. So have yourselves a merry little season, and I'll join you all again in 2009 for the last leg of our collective wait for the airship to Metafalss!

Reyvateilian hair accessories!

2008-12-20T01:58:00.000-08:00

So today I made a really neat little accessory for my Mir avatar in SL: a tiny set of organ pipes with a ribbon attached. Sadly, I couldn't find an existing ribbon that had full permissions, and I didn't think I was up to crafting my own, so this item is no-copy for now-- meaning I can't sell or give them away. I will hopefully soon have an appropriately-permissioned tiny ribbon, though, so these should go live soon-- with a larger range of instruments, assuming I'm up to crafting them. Pipes are pretty easy. XD

The neatest thing about this little charm? If you click on it, it plays a sound clip. Currently a ten-second clip from Harmonious Fusion, as that's what I had uploaded to that account to test with, but I'll look up some actual organ clips soon.

See the pics here.

(Also, the, uh, giant pixellated pointer is just something she happens to have attached to her head. It's not meant to be pointing at the pipes, though its position was coincidental and amusing enough that I left it in the photographs.)

Worksafe warnings apply....

2008-12-18T14:06:00.000-08:00

So I did say I'd be posting some fanart of Mir using SL as a generating tool, and here are a few from a photoshoot I did today in a great set of sims by La TusSim. I stumbled across these earlier today, played about with some of the poseballs, and went, "hey-- this would make a great setup for an awakening-Mir shoot". Some Photoshop involved, to varying degrees, though the third image needed almost no edits (and was also a fluke, since the pose from the first image accidentally carried over through the teleport)-- and the pseudo-Ar Tonelico in the second was there to begin with!

The problem with fanart of Mir is that it generally either involves nakedness or costumes that are next to impossible to come by (or, I suppose, Funbun t-shirts), so I opted for nakedness in these images-- which, despite the fact that this is how official art and pretty much all fanart draws her, somehow manages to look more explicit than I'd tend to go for. I think it's the 3D.

Still, I think these are tasteful-- or at least, as tasteful as Mir ever gets.

Mule Birth
Virus Code
Wake Up, Mir

Funbun t-shirts for your First Life!

2008-12-17T15:26:00.000-08:00

Since the GUST-licensed equivalents have sold out, we've cooked up some Cafepress-style Funbun shirts. The sleeves are longer than on the originals, unfortunately, and they don't come in huge sizes... but hey, that's not the point. After all, it's fun as a souvenir, but would you really wear it? ;)

*would totally wear it*

Three red lights means you need Diquility... but what if you're a Beta?

2008-12-17T07:41:00.000-08:00

While working on an install port design for Mir, we unfortunately encountered a few... stability issues. (Work-safety warning: nudity, mosaic-censored, behind link.)

Poor Mir; looks like she's going to have to be shipped back to the Tower for repairs. Thankfully, like most other problems in the AT universe, this one can be fixed with towels, at least temporarily. Just wrap her up, keep her warm, and she'll be good to go again pretty soon.

Funbun t-shirts and Black Mugs now available in SL!

2008-12-13T14:20:00.001-08:00

Okay, I'm still figuring out how to do this whole "selling" thing, so apologies for any bugs; but even though I don't have a store, you can now grab the Last Boss's Black Mugs, as well as a box of Funbun t-shirts in both long and short sizes (modelled here and here by our glamorous assistant Mir, on location at the scenic Obscure Sandbox), for 50L each by pinging Jakuri Halostar in Second Life. Hopefully. Maybe. I will try to actually make this work.

Install ports coming soon, perhaps? XD

Bringing the glory of The Last Boss's Black Mug to worlds beyond....

2008-12-12T15:57:00.000-08:00

We all love The Last Boss's Black Mug. With its endearingly Engrish name, its wrathful vibrating action, and its sleek, Jakuri-adorned features, what's not to adore about this unique piece of crockery? Now, the infamous mug has made its debut in a whole new world: the world of Second Life.

Click, click and click again to see the mug in action! Modelled here by my very own Mir avatar (in fetching HTTP status-code 403 pajamas, no less), the Jakuri mug provides an unlimited supply of caffeine to lagging Reyvateils on the go, and its wrath will keep any avatar's hands warm for hours. So even if you can't have the glory of the Last Boss's Black Mug in your own home here, you can still have one in Second Life. (Well, if you're me, I guess. I don't actually have a shop to sell these things from....)

More Mir portraits from Second Life coming soon; this avatar makes a great model for insta-fanart.

So, random thing, but....

2008-12-12T13:15:00.000-08:00

...does it say anywhere in the official materials for AT how Grathnode crystals are removed from Reyvateils? Can anyone think how they would be? Since the crystals seem to be absorbed into the body at the site of the install port, one would think getting them out would require magic; it's not like you can just reach your hand in and grab one. Yet the Reyvateils' partners seem to be able to remove them fairly trivially.

Any thoughts on this? I was thinking some kind of device might be used to scan for existing Grathnodes, extract the raw... Grathnode-stuff through the install port and recrystallise them, basically reversing the install process, but that's basically my bit of handwaving and Applied Phlebotinum; the actual process doesn't seem to be discussed in-game at all....

I <3 Reyvablog.

2008-12-05T20:14:00.000-08:00

Have I mentioned how much I love the Reyvablog? And the fact that its players are now, amongst other wonderful things, spontaneously generating in-world poetry? (See, at current, the bottom of the thread.) It's always an honour to have one's fanwork generate more fanworks, and nowhere does this tendency have the opportunity to thrive more than in RP, where the fans are the content creators, in part.

I'm thankful to everyone who's participated, and continues to participate, in this great shared exercise in worldcrafting. You've all given something great to this work and helped it to grow, and I hope to see it continue to thrive.

Taking first, for the rights of Reyvateils everywhere.

2008-11-29T11:06:00.000-08:00

So Falling Through The Generation Gap is, as of this posting, officially the number one Google result for "diquility". That's fairly impressive, considering the term is used in a lot of discussions of AT; I suppose it's that we're probably the only site that actually uses the term repeatedly and often, rather than simply mentioning it in passing.

I'm quite heartened by this, not because I specifically want traffic, but rather because I like to imagine that if there were Reyvateils out there searching for info on Diquility, they'd be able to find helpful advice straight away; and also, if people are searching for generic info on the world of AT and the first thing they find is something that treats that world as a real, meaningful place... that's really awesome, and I'm quite honoured that I could have been responsible for that.

We're also, incidentally, the first result for "reyvateil rights" (in quotes); sadly enough, though, my writings here and on my other blogs seem to be the only results for that query. A shame that no one else has considered the concept worthy of serious discussion, especially since there are such obvious parallels with the oppression of various groups in our own world throughout history. I suppose AT's a small fandom, but still, I think there's a lot of potentially enlightening elaboration to be had there, which is why Falling Through The Generation Gap exists. I hope, through it, more fans can be brought around to seriously thinking about the rights of Reyvateils when they enter that world; I think it's an issue that, if you're at all a fan of the Reyvateil characters (or even if you aren't, but especially if you are), deserves some serious thought.

Speaking of FTTGG (or the Reyvablog, as its players fondly refer to it), I'd like to re-promote this particular link and see if I can't get a few of you to spread it around. It's presented from an in-game perspective, but it was written with a dual purpose: as well as making the players aware of many of the unfair ways in which Reyvateils are treated day-to-day on the streets and in the media, it also contains a message to those of us in this world, about how the characters people idolise might feel about artwork that shows them being degraded and humiliated.

If you sympathise with a fictional character and feel uncomfortable with the way a lot of artwork treats them as objects, and want to encourage other people to reflect, for a moment, on whether the characters they love would really want people thinking of them in that way, I encourage you to link to this entry if you can. It's not about being anti-porn; I'm quite fine with the existence of works that portray sexualised situations for the purposes of other people's pleasure. I just don't like that images that specifically degrade and brutalise characters are becoming widespread and even normative, because I don't like seeing the characters I love portrayed that way and I don't like thinking that others are becoming desensitised to the idea of their casual mistreatment. If you think the same way, linking to this campaign is one way to raise your voice in harmony. It may make someone think twice.

Sometimes, even a really sketchy image can capture your heart....

2008-11-22T22:07:00.000-08:00

Do you ever get that? When you run across an image that isn't the best of fanart, not the most detailed, has plenty of errors, yet still somehow manages to evoke something so sincere that it ends up becoming a favourite?

That's how I feel about this. (Worksafe warning: contains naked Mir curled up; just a sketch, vague.) Simple, yes, yet there's something about the lines of her face that evokes such sympathy from me. I've always been touched by this pose of hers; it's a striking pose for the very final boss to have. Instead of being an imposing, monstrous demigod at the end (okay, she's that in her penultimate form, but still), she's just a frail little girl hiding away behind protective shields, hugging her knees in fear. That combined with the fact that beforehand, all she's basically saying to you is "go away... don't come near me...", creates such a heartrending image of someone who, more than anything, just wants all this conflict to end, even if she's scared that if she's the one who ends it, things will only return to the way they've been before.

Mir can't give in; she needs the world to change before she is prepared to stop fighting. If she concedes, she has no guarantee that they will. But Lyner proves that humans can be safe by being the first to back down, and once she's convinced of that, she gives in easily. She never wanted to fight.

I feel personally tortured by GUST...

2008-11-22T14:58:00.001-08:00

...with the release of this heartbreakingly magnificent Phantasmagoria music box, already sold out in preorder, and this Jakuri mug (endearingly entitled "The Last Boss's Black Mug"), which is not yet sold out but which I can't imagine ever being able to procure.

At the very least, you can listen to a snippet from the music box on the page. Doing so fair broke my heart; it's simply beautiful. I think it officially sounds a lot nicer than the version of Phantasmagoria on the Hymmnos Orgel Collection, even if it's only a brief snippet of the song; there's a deep, rich warmth to the sound that makes me all nostalgic, probably because I actually used to have a little music box that only came out at Christmas-time (we kept it with the decorations the rest of the year) and so the sound reminds me of that. I miss that music box. Makes me want to see fanart of a Reyvateil gazing longingly through the windows of a toy shop at a music box on a snowy day....

Even if I can't have these, I'll be saving the pages for posterity. Still trying to work out why the Jakuri mug is trembling at me from the top of the page, though.

Can we do it? On January 20th, we start finding out.

2008-11-20T13:46:00.000-08:00

Further to my previous post on the topic, I've been cooking up some January 20th-related images that I plan to add to t-shirts to wear on and around the time: here and here.

I'm pretty proud of my idea of the first one in that it works as well to describe Obama's inauguration as it does to describe interacting with fictional worlds: social change is our responsibility, in both situations. And I'm really pleased with what I managed to do with a certain couple of imposing and important structures in the second... wow. And I'd never have made that parallel, either. They do kind of look alike, don't they?

~~Jakuri for VP!~~ Hey, she'd overturn this civil rights mess that's wrecking the country currently. Vote for her and she'll SING EQUAL RIGHTS BACK INTO THE CONSTITUTION, people.

Ringing and singing the changes....

2008-11-19T23:08:00.000-08:00

I just learnt that President-Elect Obama's inauguration day is going to be January 20th. And all we Ar Tonelico fans know what that date means, I hope...? :)

It's going to be a wonderful day for new hopes, new awakenings. A wonderful day for new worlds.

(Also, I suddenly had the thought that it would be so amusing if January 20th fell on a Tuesday next year, because then we could call it AT2's Day. And I looked up, and it so totally is. Not since Sonic 2's Day have there been such release-date lulz. Well, release-date lulz are usually fairly hard to find, but still.)

"And the world is turning... to a different beat."

2008-11-18T20:57:00.000-08:00

So as I mentioned the other day, I've been running/playing in an RP based around an activist blog run by and for Reyvateils. Its purpose as I conceived it was to both explore the legitimate issues raised by this species' creation and situation, and to raise the profile of activism issues within the fandom by getting people to sympathise with the issues through a fandom they were interested in.

Today, I think it actually had that impact on me. Last night, I'd been participating in a thread involving underpaid restaurant workers who were wearing "tip us, we sing" badges (like the ones at Coldstone Creamery) because the hourly wage alone couldn't pay for their life-extending agent, and so they were forced to sell out their song. For Reyvateils, this is a big deal; it's not just vocal noise, there's a big part of their identity and deep inner self expressed when they sing, and it's something that both induces intense emotion in them and drains their energy quite a bit.

Then this morning, a friend posted a blog entry about employees at Starbucks and how she felt bad for them, and how she was trying to be encouraging and pleasant to them and they were really squee about it because she was the only one to have given them nice comments all day. And I just really... felt it, was moved by that, and felt like I wanted to go around being nice to Starbucks employees too (I don't normally drink at Starbucks when on my own, but employees of similar places, I guess). And I think the reason I was able to feel so hyper-aware of how much that must mean to them was because I'd been roleplaying that thread.

You always hear people scoffing at the idea that fiction could ever change someone's attitudes in a positive way (as if that wasn't what the messages in fiction were there for? As if it's all just pretend serving no purpose, even when it's obvious the author is trying to make a statement about how we act in this world?). Whenever you come across anyone acknowledging that fiction might impact a person, it's always regarding the negative aspects of it, how it can desensitise people to violence, to vengeance, to wanton cruelty. I do believe that there are, certainly, fictions that can do that; but I think what goes woefully underrecognised is the power of fiction to make us empathise, which seems like such an obvious thing to say about fiction (it makes us feel for the characters? Really?) yet is rarely thought about in terms of how that might impact how we go about our daily lives.

I felt like the experience of fiction connected me, today, with the lives of people in this world who deserve acknowledgment and respect. And I'm glad for that.

Melody of MetaFalicia!

2008-11-17T07:41:00.001-08:00

I suppose that's like the catgirl from Darkstalkers, but aware of her identity as a fictional character? Also, I'm deeply amused that it's been pre-emptively classified as a "Music & Party" game. The idea of games being categorised by the themes of their plot rather than the style of their gameplay is actually really appealing; I mean, Ar Tonelico is about music, very deeply, and so the category is not inaccurate, but I don't really think that's what they meant. I do wonder how that error got made; did someone ask what AT was and one of their collegues said "oh, it's about music and stuff"? Very amused indeed.

Seeing the page up on a major game retailer's site is actually rather nice. It's like... this is real. This is really real, and come January, you'll be able to go into any GameStop and pick it up off the shelves and hold it, and other people who may have never heard of AT will be able to see it, and they might buy it, and things. It's just really squeeful, somehow.

The wheels of fandom keep on turning...

2008-11-13T12:12:00.001-08:00

Hoping to get back to the podfic project eventually while my voice actress recovers from being sick. In the meantime, I've slowly been building up entries on this blog; contributions from Reyvateils, and respectful humans, are welcome.

And I kind of wanted to say more there, but I'm all out of words. There is a fledgling fanwork; enjoy it, and I hope to nurture it and watch it grow into a complex and interesting work of fiction, with the help of some kind contributers.

Self-inserts: gotta love 'em.

2008-11-11T11:18:00.000-08:00

I never really set out to actively write myself into the AT universe; these guys just kind of grew, organically, which is part of the reason there's two of them. Just thought I'd post them here for posterity: my two original AT characters, Leish and Ayulsa. For those who saw Leish's profile a while ago (all one of you), this is a version 2.0; some things have been tweaked a little.

Leish Enfandria
"Please, everyone, raise your voices in joyous prayer."

Species: Reyvateil (Beta)
Age: 34
Height: 5'4"
Appearance: Pale brown hair usually tied back in a short braid, golden-brown eyes, slightly freckled skin; small, skinny, with boyish features
Magic: Mostly of the Earth element

Leish is the cheerful type, bookish and friendly, known for his slightly formal bearing and his staunch devotion to the Church of Elemia. A Cardinal who treats his job extremely seriously and is given to visions, trances and other mystical experiences at the hands of the Goddesses, he can come off as a little dreamy and spacey at times to those who don't know him well, but his dedication to his work soon disavows most people of that opinion, even if he does leave his personal quarters in a mess and half-eaten sandwiches of his tend to turn up in the strangest of places. Like his partner Vianchiel, he dislikes conflict both philosophically and personally; their shared feelings about helping humanity through peaceful actions are part of why they get along so well.

What almost no one knows is that Leish, despite being male, is actually a Reyvateil, an experiment gone slightly wrong. He was created with a Reyvateil's body, enabling him to use Song Magic, but the song-spirit that entered into him at birth saw itself to be male. Unable to reconcile his appearance with his internal self, he struggled with despair until his creators took pity on him and altered him physically to look like a boy, suggesting that he go out into the world and craft a normal life for himself while forgetting his Reyvateil powers, and offering their sincerest of apologies.

While Leish did leave his creators and join the Elemia Church, having been filled with a sudden sense of spiritual wonder at the world inspired by his newfound happiness, he was never able to quite forget that he was a Reyvateil too, and still frequently feels driven to raise his voice in song. Unfortunately, the physical alterations to his body pretty much ruined his voice permanently, and quite frankly, his singing is painful to listen to. His bad voice doesn't actually keep his magic from being quite powerful, but since it's not pleasant to hear, he shies away from practising it; he considers that even if he were good he'd never want to sing in public anyway, since he'd be even more embarrassed about being exposed as a Reyvateil. He considers the trade to have been worthwhile, even if at times he finds it frustrating.

What's most embarrassing of all for him is that his install port has a really obvious location; it's on his right hand. Naturally, he's never seen in public without gloves of some sort. He tried to train himself to be left-handed so he wouldn't have to be constantly reminded of it, but it didn't work very well, so he just puts up with it these days. If he catches anyone staring at his hands, he gets extremely flustered; everyone by now assumes that he has some kind of skin condition that he'd rather not talk about, or that his hands are shrivelled and deformed due to a sickness, which, since they're quite small even in gloves, doesn't seem unlikely. He's learnt to swallow down his revulsion and shake hands (with his left, which still bothers him due to emotional associations, but at least doesn't feel quite as violating) for the purposes of diplomacy, but if you touch them without giving him a chance to prepare, he'll freak out. He's normally not prone to panic at all, but that's one way to get him very upset very quickly.

He can be a bit obsessive about his interests, namely the intricacies of church dogma, and he's prone to getting just a tiny bit preachy about his beliefs, though he tries to keep a lid on it.

Leish has a Cosmosphere, and he has costumes, too. Unless you're Via, though, good luck getting to see them; he'd never wear them in public, even the tame ones, and he's not up for letting anyone except his partner into his Cosmosphere any time soon. The very fact that he has one is embarrassing, and it's hard for even Via to dive very deep into him just because he has so many reservations about diving itself that even his first level is difficult to clear, though she hopes that by working through his Cosmosphere he'll become more relaxed about the fact that he's a Reyvateil and maybe even be able to fully embrace his magic. His Mind Guardian is Aazzmissaggamoth (a shortened nickname, believe it or not), a small golden dragon statue after the Chinese style.

Ayulsa Shinsekai
"For eternity, a new world."

Species: Virus
Age: Unknown; appears about eight
Height: 4'1"
Appearance: See reference sheet
Magic: No Song Magic, but can interact with the Binary Field
Favourite pastime: Nature hunts
Favourite lullaby: EXEC_HARMONIOUS/.
Favourite food: Cookies 'n' cream icecream (with oatmeal chocolate chip)
Least favourite food: Chicken stew
Greatest frustration: That he can't sing like his mother, even when he tries to copy her

A virus created by Mir, Ayulsa takes a humanoid form in the physical world much as Ayatane does. Specifically, his appearance is that of a young boy with scruffy, brownish-blond hair with lavender tips, wide green eyes, and corrupted Hymmnos sigils running over his skin that glow with a faint blue light; he is typically dressed in brightly-coloured, practical clothing of the sort that might befit a child of seven or eight years old. He considers Ayatane to be his brother, and looks to Mir as a parent figure.

Ayulsa was the first humanoid virus created to aid Mir with her plan to redeem and revitalise the world of Ar Ciel. Remembering her own youth and the boundless love she held for humanity then, she saw the image of a curious, kindly child as best suited for this task, and indeed Ayulsa possesses many of the personality traits his mother had in her childhood: he is gentle and made uneasy by violence, creative and playful though in a manner that is not too boisterous and is mindful of the world around him, and easily awed by the joys and wonders of life.

While Mir tried to craft for him a personality that would make him happy as well as making him of use to her plans, she put no limitations on his development, believing that all intelligent entities have the right to the freedom of mind and emotion they tried to strip from her. As such, he doesn't feel himself beholden to her and will often get distracted from his tasks by his own interests, which Mir allows, not so concerned as she once was with the efficiency of her plan's execution at the cost of the principles she believes in. He still cares for her deeply, though, and by default will be found at her side, engaging in some simple frivolity, reading, or simply observing the world around, ready to be called into her service at a moment's notice.

Despite his docility and guileless playfulness, he possesses the intelligence of an adult, though his emotional responses remain largely those of a child. As a result, on a social and personal level he appears to be young and naive, but can almost seem adult when discussing practical matters, and has a startlingly large vocabulary.

A pondering on the power of the Word.

2008-11-09T13:45:00.000-08:00

Something I was thinking about with regard to spirituality and AT's world: the official timeline (which I'm pretty sure by now is not a spoilery document, as it covers AT1 only, and I don't think these details will be released outside of the timeline) begins with the creation of the first word. It's very Biblical: in the beginning, there was the Word. And, incidentally, that word was "chs": a verb meaning become, turn into, or transform.

"Chs" is actually a more popularly used verb than those meanings would seem to account for in English, given that it seems to mean "become" only in the sense of fundamental change (e.g. "the kind of person I will become"), not in the senses of becoming happy or becoming used to something. This catalysing word, this primary word, this word which suggests that the universe's most divine instrument is its ability to turn one thing into another (which seems to make sense; given that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, the force of movement behind the universe, the thing that causes it not to remain in static state, would seem to be the transformation of energy into different states), seems to be echoed repeatedly in the songs of the world.

Perhaps we could say that the Reyvateils are subconsciously working this vital word into their music just because it is such a strong underlying current within the universe, but I think it's more than even that; I think there's a very obvious reason the word is used a lot. If the divine force of the universe is the capacity for change, then that capacity should be a fundamental part of magic. And indeed, magic, too, is very obviously about change, transformation, becoming. Our obvious image of magic is turning the latent energy in ourselves and in the universe into heat, or light, or growth, or a healing power. There is little in magic that does not involve some manner of change, even if it is the changing of a thing from a state in which it was moving to a state in which it is not (meta-change that seems like the opposite of change, yet also requires one). The Reyvateils are consciously or subconsciously aware that chs is the force behind their magic, and as such they invoke it, and as such their magic is powerful -- and the series creators show that the Reyvateils aren't just making pretty mouth movements, but are actually a species that gets magic quite a bit.

Incidentally, I think it's interesting that in AT's case we get to know what the first word was. In the Bible we get "the Word was God", but does that mean that "God" was the first word (making the first word a self-definition, "I", which is interesting philosophically in itself in that it seems to suggest that the creation of the world is tied up with the defining of the world, and that maybe how we define the world has immense power to affect it), or that God was a word, but we don't know which? Hmm, ponder....

Three-Way Handshake, remastered

2008-11-09T12:36:00.000-08:00

Just so's you know, Three-Way Handshake just got a bit of a retool thanks to some extra info I heard regarding Jakuri's drama CD that I really wanted to play around with. Updated version is at the same location, here; if you read it and liked it the first time, you might want to take a look at the revised version.

And yep, I think that's about it.

Hands on hearts, raise your voices, one and all...

2008-11-08T13:34:00.000-08:00

In this time when many Americans are feeling particularly uplifted about the possibilities unfolding in their nation-- and others, noting that social progress has not occurred equality on all fonts, could do with a little more uplifting-- PsychDragoonX from A Reyvateil's Melody has contributed some words that should stir the hearts of even the most jaded American. I bring you... the preamble to the US constitution, and the Pledge of Allegiance, in Hymmnos.

Original:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Translation:
EXEC_with.METHOD_HYMME_PREAMBLE_CONSTITUTION_UNITED_STATES/.
Was granme erra walasye oz UNITED STATES
Was granme erra art 0x vvi.
zahha herr dgal
quen quowjaz
gyusya dgal falfa
grandus walasye
grrew WELFARE
grandus arhou oz LIBERTY sos walasye oz iem en futare
1x AAs ixi
Was paks ra quen CONSTITUTION sos UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Literally:
To protect the United States with desire,
With the desire to protect,
Create their nation,
Create justice,
Control notional peace,
Protect the people,
Improve Welfare,
Protect the blessings of Liberty for the people of now and the future,
With great excitement, create the Constitution for the United States of America.

Original:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands: One nation, under God, indivisible, With liberty and justice for all.

Translation:
EXEC_HYMME_PLEDGE_OF_ALLEGIANCE/.
Rrha zweie ra grandus zuieg oz UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Rrha ki ra en dgal en echrra.
Rrha wol ra 0x vvi
en dgal
en Saash
na pakz
1x AAs ixi
Rrha ki erra LIBERTY en quowjaz en ciel.

Literally:
Entranced, I guard the power of the USA
Concentrating, for the nation that it resonates (stands for)
Enfevored,
For one nation
Under God
Indivisible
Concentrating for Liberty and Justice for all.

I am deeply, deeply amused. I think it's the last lines of each of these that do it.

In other news, seriously thinking of doing a revision on Three-Way Handshake, now that I've discovered a little extra tidbit that was in that scene on the drama CD that I really want to explore, and I think I know just how to drop it in there. If I'd known about this in the first place, it would have so been in the original....

Three-Way Handshake -- Ar Tonelico fanfiction (Spica/Jakuri, 1,572 words, mildly suggestive fluff)

2008-11-06T14:47:00.000-08:00

Inspired by a snippet from Jakuri's drama CD in which the two of them get captured and locked in a cell, and Spica gets shot down by Jakuri after trying to hit on her (yes. I know. It is really sort of awesome). I didn't mean for this to turn out as PG-13 as it did; the latter part was the part I really wanted to write, but I needed to give it some sort of setup. I'd originally intended for Spica's flirtation to be a brief couple of lines, but ultimately, I have trouble not being wordy. This was meant to be a drabble, honestly.

No AT2 spoilers in here. It's pretty much all concept, and the drama CD is set before AT2 anyway. Blacked out for worksafeness, though, even though this is really tame.

More notes after the fic.

Spica had been hoping to catch a little rest, but for a prison cell, this place was cloyingly warm. She glanced over at Jakuri to see if she was having the same trouble getting to sleep; she was dying to remove her own heavy outfit, except that she had nothing else to wear, and Jakuri's clothing, such as it was, could hardly be any more comfortable.

The Reyvateil, it turned out, was the heat source. The shimmering haze that danced over Jakuri's skin, a sea of flame-tongues discernible only by the distortions they left in the air, was tinged, in the part of Spica's mind that understood harmonics, with an unmistakeable magenta hue. As she watched, the swell around her only intensified, and Jakuri mumbled a "don't stare" that was mostly muffled by having been said into her pillow. Oh, my. This could be interesting.

She reached out to stroke Jakuri's cheek, not even needing to make contact before her fingertips began to tingle from the heat and light that was pouring out from her. Her touch still cool by contrast, she drew idle, swirling patterns on her skin, able to feel, as she repeated the motions, the little traces she left behind as spots where the warmth was not so stifling.

"Nn. What are you doing?" Jakuri said, grumbling and eventually summoning the willpower to swat lethargically at Spica's hand.

"Hmm, such interesting circumstances we find ourselves in here. It's okay, there's nobody watching." She leaned in to whisper her words against Jakuri's ear, feeling her own face begin to blaze with the reflected warmth. "Don't be shy."

Jakuri buried herself further into her pillow. "I'm not being shy. I'm just not interested." And the flame was swallowed back up in a rush, as if for punctuation.

Oh. Well, she'd misread that signal. She sank back into the bed with more than a twinge of guilt, Jakuri's back stonewalling her. Reaching out with her mind to try and get a sense of the situation, she could feel Jakuri's every muscle clenched rigid, her jaw clamped down to keep her song from spilling out of her, the harmonics still rolling over her in waves though she was evidently trying to choke them down. The tension in the room was even more insufferable than the heat had been, and she sighed internally. Perhaps a subject change would help.

"...Are you still feeling rough? I could tell it was making you uneasy, being cut off from your magic like that."

Jakuri made a vague sort of groan that fell halfway between what-are-you-talking-about-now and do-you-seriously-expect-me-to-expend-energy-on-answering-you. It didn't deter Spica, who was, in part, feeling some genuine concern that the incident might have shaken Jakuri more than she was willing to admit, though mostly she just wanted to break the deadlock.

"I know I found it a slight, so it must have been much worse for you." She remembered Jakuri's ranting about how she was a Reyvateil, as if she'd felt that losing her song impinged upon that identity, as if to take away her singing voice was to divide her in some unacceptable way. She could understand; she'd been truthful when she'd said she hadn't been exactly comfortable under the ward either, and seeing Jakuri try not to choke as she struggled to convince her instincts that, no, there was nothing actually in the way of her breathing had given her a pretty clear impression of what must have been going on in her mind.

"Do I really look like I want to talk right now, Spica?" Her harmonic awareness picked up the subtext there, a flanging echo behind the spoken words: do I look like I want to bare my soul more than I have to right now, Spica? There was another, dissonant chord mixed in with the protest, and Spica knew her words hadn't been entirely an affront; a little undercurrent of relief, of thankfulness, that she understood enough to notice wound warm and bright through words that were otherwise knife-edged. And now that one wound had already been opened, the possibility of communication broached, the longing to bridge the empathic gap had flared up in her still further; a longing she knew Jakuri felt too vulnerable now to act on but that she was testing at anyway, sending out little tendrils of energy towards Spica that she quickly withdrew again, like someone teasing a loose tooth with their tongue. Once or twice she thought she heard a whimper from her, a thin, hot sound as one of those tendrils got a little too close and was swallowed up by Spica's own warmth.

If she didn't want to talk, then Spica wouldn't make her talk. To press a Reyvateil to do anything with her voice-- and not least Jakuri, who had always been particularly sensitive about that, even for her species-- was never a safe endeavour, for one thing. But she couldn't let her go on like this, especially now that she'd shown, however obliquely, that she was willing to open up.

She began to hum, low in her throat, a bass note that she could feel resounding in her muscles and unravelling the knots that had accumulated there over the course of the day. She knew she ran the risk of only angering her further, but whoever was on Jakuri's mind, she needed to harmonise with someone if either of them were going to get any sleep tonight. Feeling her bumping up against her like a moth butting a lightbulb was already doing a number on her nerves, and she was willing to bet it wasn't doing much for the Reyvateil, either.

Jakuri rolled over to face her with a huff, though her expression was more curious than annoyed. "Spica...."

Not wanting to let up on her humming in order to speak, she let the frequency carry her emotions. It's just so you'll sleep. I'm sorry for assuming. Just relax into it. There was only so much she could convey without words, but she figured Jakuri would at least pick up sleep, sorry, relax.

Her hopes seemed confirmed when Jakuri's posture eased up, and the Reyvateil began to purr at her own, higher frequency. Forgiven, was hurting, feels nice, she thought she caught in her response, the feelings flowing into one another and crashing over each other in their haste to be expressed, their warm foam breaking against the shores of Spica's mind. She wrapped an arm around Jakuri's shoulders and felt her scoot closer, angling her head towards Spica's chest so as to best pick up the resonance; Spica laid her hand on Jakuri's ribcage, feeling the vibrations travel up through her arm and snake down into the base of her spine. She wondered who all that emotional overflow had been for, if not herself, but thankfully it didn't seem to be bothering her as much now that she at least had a release valve for the pressure.

Calm. Happy. Tired, Jakuri hummed, hugging her arms close to herself as her eyelids fell closed. Good. Relax. Rest, Spica continued, and Jakuri took that rest and wound it into her own vocalising, emitting a warm, steady tone that drove out the last prickles of aching from their bones.

Slowly, over time, Jakuri's part of the chorus began to waver, and Spica felt her harmonics settling into a deep and easy rhythm as her consciousness faded out. ...strange... special... human... was the last thing she managed to emote before her voice left her completely, and the steady sound of her breathing took over its role.

The soothing pulse of her harmonics reverberated through Spica, too, and she found her own eyelids suddenly weighted. Strange. Special. Human. She smiled to herself as she drifted away, her thoughts echoing the concepts with the same wordless resonance that had voiced them.

She awoke to the feeling of Jakuri's warmth most pleasantly draped about her. Physically speaking, she'd rolled away at some point in the night and collapsed into an artless tangle of limbs on the other side of the bed; but that nonetheless spoke volumes, since she'd never seen her sleep any way other than curled into a fetal ball, and she could feel the distinctive chords of Jakuri's energy lazily twined around hers, their rises and falls slipping between the pulses of her own life like they had always been there and knew exactly where they fit.

She was quietly confident that her companion would wake up, probably in a decently better mood for the peace she'd managed to find during the night, and demonstrate little evidence of morning embarrassment. This was natural like breathing to her, natural like singing; that she'd been so reticent to harmonise was the abnormality, for normally Reyvateils melted into everything that surrounded them as easily as warm summer light. But that was, she admitted, part of what she found so delightful about them. And if she'd helped her friend to get back, even a little, to being the blithe spirit she was intended to be... well, that was all the reward she needed.

Almost, anyway, she thought, running her fingertips over Jakuri's pale throat and feeling the pulse-like flutter there. She brushed her lips against the sweet spot and let the quiet purr of her systems sink deep into her body; capturing, for a few moments longer, the one song of hers that she would never cease to sing.

From the author: Probably the second "expository" piece I've written recently (the other was for another fandom), in that it basically exists to showcase an idea I had about the game's world and how it works; in this case, my thinking was that harmonics is essentially a state of being produced by things in the area vibrating at the same frequency, or carrying the same energy, and that by making sound intended to express soothing emotions you could cause the harmonics of someone who was anxious to resonate at a more comforting frequency.

And yes, Jakuri's final words there were in the drama CD, more or less. I think she was more trying to say that Spica was different from everyone else she knew than really emoting at her that much; it's ambiguous.

And the title, for those who didn't know, is a reference to this.

So my computer got a virus....

2008-11-05T19:42:00.000-08:00

...and, much to my displeasure and my general ethical qualms with deleting viruses, I had to try and get rid of it. Cue me downloading a whole slew of antivirus programs in an attempt to get anywhere near it; I knew it was there because Spybot Search & Destroy kept telling me that something with a weird name was trying to change the registry and wouldn't let me refuse the changes, and I kept getting popups for sites that tried to download more viruses onto my system (while surfing sites I knew wouldn't serve me popups), but I didn't know what it was. Eventually, I got Prevx CSI, which offered to scan my system in two minutes. It took about five, but it did find all the malware, and got rid of it (for a fee, which included a year's subscription). It told me to restart so it could finish cleaning up the files. So I did.

When I got back to the desktop, all seemed well, except that my wallpaper had disappeared.

My... Mir wallpaper.

I guess it really did clean all the viruses off my system. (I managed to restore the wallpaper, by the by.)

So something I've realised about Hymmnos: one thing that's really unusual about it is how it's quite programming language-like in structure, yet it's also heavily focused on emotion. Normally the cyborg/artificially-created computer-based race is portrayed as less emotional than humans, or sometimes equally as emotional, but with Reyvateils being the only people left who can sing these highly emotionally-focused songs, with Mir having been a deeply emotional person and also the most powerful Beta in existence, we can hypothesise that Reyvateils are, at least ideally (in that their emotion seems to be linked to their power), more emotional than humans. That's a really interesting combination, the idea of an AI race being hyperemotional, and one that I've not seen done often.

Also, was pondering quite randomly, in the wake of the Prop 8 debacle, whether there might ever have been any social discrimination in Sol Ciel regarding human/Reyvateil relationships. They seem accepted now, but I can imagine a time when it was considered beneath humans to have relationships with Reyvateils; and even now the dynamic that the relationships do have seems very unequal, and I wonder if the relationships between males and human females are like that as well or if it's only Reyvateils who are treated that way. Food for thought (and fic)....

Presia metafalica rifaien tou yor sphilar....

2008-11-05T12:47:00.000-08:00

haounomiko just posted this touching statement for the benefit of all of those who have lost rights now that California's Proposition 8 will, presumably, be passed.

Even if you're not gay, lesbian or bisexual yourself, even if you never plan to get married, please pass this message of support and comfort around for the benefit of those whose pain at being marginalised might be eased, just a little, by knowing that someone out there cares.

Epic adventures in the wild, woolly world of podficcing...

2008-11-04T16:17:00.000-08:00

So a friend and I spent most of today working on a fanfic. I say a friend because while I don't normally collaborate, this was a particularly special occasion: I'd decided after listening to some podcasts that I wanted to try and record the first ever Ar Tonelico podfic. Basically, think audiobook, but for fic: a story told in spoken word. But I don't have the voice of a Reyvateil, so I had to enlist some help.

The actual acting went great, and I was planning to have the project ready for you all today, but for one annoying hitch: our equipment wasn't very good. I'm not sure if it's the mic input on my laptop or the microphone itself (which I went out and bought specially for this project, and I got the best quality one they had at reasonable price), but there was enough static and feedback that even hours of tinkering in various editors couldn't remove it fully. So what we ended up with was a file that's barely audible at low volumes, and muffled and muddy at high volumes.

We're going to try again and see if we can get a better setup with another computer or perhaps some different equipment, because I'm really pleased with what we've got so far, but in the meantime, that's what I've been doing all day. I really rather wanted to have that up for you right now....

"Yorr desfel?" "Was ki ga desfel."

2008-11-03T08:23:00.000-08:00

...no, don't worry, speakers of Hymmnos, the subject line bears no relation to my mood. Rather, I'm expressing my delight at discovering today that hearing these lines now makes me shiver instinctively, because as soon as I hear them I am keenly aware of what they mean. ("Are you feeling hatred?" "(In my fierce concentration that I hope to end,) I'm feeling hatred.") They're not just pretty syllables for me any more; I react to them as I would react to any word or phrase I knew, without having to think about it. I still don't know much Hymmnos, at all, but still, that little reaction made me happy.

And it's such an elegantly compact language, too; the fact that I can hear "was ki ga" and get out of it an emotion, the intensity of that emotion, and the singer's meta-feelings about having that emotion demonstrates just how much you really can convey in three words with the right grammar. Any attempt to express those concepts in English, or most other languages I know, is always going to come out sounding clunkier than "was ki ga". You hear that, and you know what it means, and you don't need any more; it's sweet simplicity, poetic, almost haiku-esque.

Incidentally, I found a different translation of the opening to EXEC_SPHILIA/. from the one I'm used to reading, here, and I have to say I think I understand the song a bit better having read it in this version:

Wee paks ga faf yora accrroad mea?
[What do you give me?]
Was yea ra pauwel en wael yor.
[I give you the power to be happy]
Wee paks ga chs mea?
[What will I become?]
Echrra en chs ar dor.
[Unity, and reconciliation with the world]
(Lit: Resonance to become one world)
Was paks ga chs na mea,
[I will become not me]
en paul yor yora harton mea
[To feel your love for me]...

That last bit I think is particularly profound: I will become not me, to feel your love for me. Given that from what I've heard this song is likely a dialogue between Jakuri's different sides, she's talking, most likely, about separating herself into aspects of herself in her Cosmosphere so that she can give herself love and reassurance as if someone else were giving it to her. That's really quite poignant, when you think about it; she's like a child hugging herself, almost, in this part of the song.

Also, that "What will I become?/Unity, and reconciliation with the world" part really gets to me, in a good way. It's what I've always hoped the eventual outcome of her story will be: not just even that she'll bring that about, but that she'll become that, a raw force focused on making it happen, blazing energy and light for change. Me like.

That said, there are some shaky parts to the translation ("desfel" translated as "being shy" seems to be the biggest error; I don't immediately spot any others, but again, I'm no Hymmnos scholar), so I'm not sure how authentic it is on the whole, but still... I like the new meanings that may have been revealed here.

The Reyvateil's Dilemma -- Ar Tonelico fanfiction (OC, 1,097 words, no warnings)

2008-11-02T13:00:00.000-08:00

So you want to know how to relate to me? All right, then. I'll tell you how, in two easy steps.

First, you need to remember that my body's an instrument.

Second, you need to forget it.

You don't know what it means to me to sing. I understand that; you can't sing, and neither could your parents, or grandparents, unless there's a Reyvateil in your family line. But when you assume it's just something clever we do with our voices, a pretty frippery to amuse you, your ignorance cuts to the core. You write off the centre of our beings as a neat party trick, and expect us to feel complimented.

We don't. We never will.

Did you think the instruments woven into my hair, the images and patterns with which I adorn myself, were just there to enhance my attractiveness in your eyes? They're symbolic of what matters to me most in this world, of the act that defines, for me, who I am.

But you don't get to define me as that. If you understood what you were saying when you did, perhaps. But you don't. So let me enlighten you.

When I sing, I'm not just making noises with my vocal cords. Nor am I even just expressing my emotions, though that's a part of it, too. When I sing, my whole body resonates with an idea, an intent; a basal concept, like love, or longing. Interspersed throughout that are subtler highs and lows, nuanced turns of emotion and meaning that come together, like highlights and shadows, to paint a picture that I myself become. I am the emotion, I am the song, and I pour out my heart until I feel my insides are being turned out; until I feel the very boundaries of my body are melting away into sound waves, released into a swell of expression within which they alternately surge and drown. A drop of liquid in endless seas am I, with no seeming power to affect the whole, yet this ocean is made of nothing more than a million million such droplets, and my movements vibrate through them all as they vibrate through me, defining me as I define them. I know myself part of a seamless concordance, a vastness of motion and life.

When I sing, natural law shapes itself to my will. My whole body can float as if it were weightless; and you do not know what a release that can be, to escape the aching pull of gravity and drift as if I were no more than smoke or dust. My touch can crystallise water, or ignite tinder to flames, the very atoms of the universe gyrating or stilling as my mind and heart command. I can call down the brightest of energies into my body, flood my nerves with a blazing clarity that seems to strip every imperfection from my bones, sets my whole frame vibrating to a note so pure you would break down and cry just to hear it.

And in all of this, I am motion beyond containment, I am life beyond motion, I am alive beyond life; I am fused with a consciousness primordial, undying, and I exult in this as it strips away my ability to comprehend anything other than nn, ma, fou, wee, was, rrha, a scale that rises within my heart and climaxes, not in anything so crude as an explosion of light, but in a swell of serenity that makes me feel stretched out across the universe a million miles wide.

This for me alights a consuming passion, a drive, a fire, a need. It's not a need like lust or hunger, nothing so simple, nothing so base; it's higher, brighter, stronger if possible, an inexorable pull towards a calling that encompasses far more than just my self. It is the heart of existence, singing in harmony with me; and not just me alone, but everyone, because we all vibrate the same at our cores. But still, when I feel it resonate with the very heart of my being, it feels as if the universe is singing just for my soul; my soul!; can you imagine the wonder? It takes me into it and holds me dear, and I never want to leave. It is the beginning and end, the embodiment, of my world.

The very beginning and end.

I dream in sine waves, in square waves, in harmonic oscillations. When I sink into unconsciousness, the last thing to echo in the back of my mind is always, unfailingly, a rhythm.

I vibrate with song, with the need for song, every moment that I draw in breath. If I am not singing, my chest is always aching. At any moment, just because it pleases me, I could lift my voice in rapture; but I do not, because you would not understand. I do it alone, and I shudder and bite back tears, choking down my need for more. I would sing to you constantly if you would let me, surround your every waking moment in music's sweet caress, soothe your doubts and calm your fears. If it were for that pure expression, I would never want to stop.

But you take that wonder, that gift of my own heart, and cheapen it. You drown my natural emotions with artificial energy boosts that keep me from feeling my magic's release, leaving me frustrated and empty. You make me take crystals into my body to "strengthen my songs" that cause me agony, not caring that I wasn't born to sustain that level of intensity. You force me to sing for you, as you want, when you want it. And then I stop wanting to, because it doesn't feel the same any more. When the joy of singing, my deepest self-expression and my fullest offering to this world, is thus muted, the conflict rends my heart in two.

My song defines me, explains me, represents me to the universe. When you take that for granted, when you use it as your tool, how do you expect me to feel?

So yes, I want to sing. I want to sing often, and full-throatedly, and for as long as I like. But that doesn't mean I'll sing at your command. And if it does so happen that I want to sing for you, just for you, don't come to expect it of me. Cherish it, as you would any other gift. Don't try and force it out of me.

My body's an instrument. But that doesn't mean you can play.

From the author: Based on Pat Parker's powerful and challenging poem on race, For The White Person Who Wants To Know How To Be My Friend. It's a poem whose opening lines set up a most difficult dilemma for us: how do we respect and acknowledge the things that are different about a person's heritage, while not treating the person like they are their differences? I wanted to explore that idea, and along with it, the idea of how a Reyvateil might feel about the parts of themselves that are unique.

I'm not usually in the habit of writing original characters, but for Ar Tonelico I've written so many. The Reyvateil concept just lends itself to it so easily; I'm easily as fascinated with the concept in general as I am with specific characters, and I hope people who feel the same will enjoy these.

Silence, Swallowed -- Ar Tonelico fanfiction (Lyner, Misha, 718 words, no warnings)

2008-11-01T23:01:00.000-07:00

I'll come back for you. I can't come every day, but I will keep coming back to see you again.

You can still hear me, right? You just can't answer me. So, I'll tell you what's going on in the world.

I'll tell you exactly what you’re saving out there....

"Misha."

The words of the Chronicle Key resounded within the room, its acoustics lending Misha's voice a richness the slight girl could never have produced on her own. The echoes filled the darkness, creating the illusion of a thousand Mishas singing there, the warmth of their words enveloping him like a blanket, pressing in on him like a shroud. With the only illumination a shaft of sun from a skylight high above-- and that seemingly more for atmosphere than to provide a light to see by-- the room felt tiny even though the depth of the sound told him otherwise, and the disparity unsettled him still further.

"Misha, I came back, just like I said." He looked up at her, perfectly poised, like a statue, an instrument cast in bronze. Nothing really felt appropriate to say to her. "Hi."

She kept on singing, of course, Chronicle Key flooding his mind with its imagery. He didn't understand the words, but the song was magic; the sentiment contained within it rang clear within his heart, unmistakeable as a clarion call. Oh, please, set down your weapons, let go your strength, rest, rest.... Her voice cried out to the world, tirelessly, and he could feel the world beginning with him, the song reverberating through every bone and sinew only to pass out the other end and continue on, leaving him forever marked. His muscles ached with the resonance, ached where she'd carved words into them, carved his flesh with sound.

"Misha... I... I want to tell you about...."

But the words wouldn't come. It wasn't just that trying to talk to her, while she sang there, unmoved by him, made him feel stupid; nor even that her stature, goddess-like, detached from the world yet praising it in the highest, seemed so far removed from the Misha he knew. It was that this chamber seemed to permit no other words, no other meanings, than those contained within the Chronicle Key. The song filled up all the available space, drowned out all other concepts. This was its place, and a place for it alone; any word that so much as tried to rise up against it would die.

That, he realised, was the power of Misha's song. It put all other intent to sleep. As long as she sang, nothing could occur in this chamber that was contrary, even tangential, to the Song.

He gave up trying to talk, then, and just watched her face. Her eyes were closed, further distancing her from her surroundings, though her eyelids flickered occasionally as the song's emotion stirred her. Her heart, he knew, was dancing constantly to the tune of it; she could not but feel its every sadness, its every plea, its every exultation as if they were truly her own. That was what she'd told him, once:

"--and I become the song."

There was no Misha there any more; not in that moment, not while she sang. The Song was the only thing that could truly live here; all else was submissive to its decree. She was only living song, only raw intent, only a singular will crystallised into the purest of tones: and that will belonged not to her, but to the Chronicle Key.

He watched her lips move in synchrony with it, almost as an afterthought, as if the Song would live regardless and she was only a front, like Tastiella, to make the whole thing seem less surreal. He watched her face, her shining face, the dim light rebounding off it and casting it in golden tones, faint sparkles on her cheeks where the light had picked out motes of dust.

Except those sparkles were moving down her face, in little channels and currents, and the note of her voice was cracking, and he knew that there was a Misha there, after all, trapped behind all that.

If her tears made sound when they hit the ground, Lyner was none the wiser, for their words were swallowed up by the Song.

From the author: Inspired by Tastiella's response to Lyner's asking if Misha could answer him: "No. She is singing. That is the only answer she can give you." I thought that was particularly poignant, and was imagining what would happen if Lyner went back to try and talk to her, as he said he would, before the Mir-possessed Shurelia kicked her out of the Chronicle.

A realisation I thought I'd share....

2008-10-31T14:39:00.000-07:00

Excerpted from a comment I posted over here:

[...] for me, what's interesting about AT1 is that in some ways it's really Mir's story-- Mir's and Lyner's, a story about how he grows to realise what she used to know but forgot, and how the two of them bring that knowledge together to change the world for the better.

I find that a pretty potent realisation, since while it's obvious to anyone that the story of Ar Tonelico is about realising that conflict only begets more conflict and that the only way to escape the cycle is to put our weapons down, the particular symmetry being employed here is something I hadn't quite noticed before.

Two people, at the beginning of Ar Tonelico, exist in very different worlds, mutually unable to understand each other, mutually antagonistic. Yet they both have the capacity to understand each other perfectly; they just need to realise that. Lyner has to learn how; and when he decides to reach out to Mir he learns, through Harmonious, that she'd already known all along. They both, in some sense, grow towards each other, and what had seemed like an unbreachable gulf at the beginning of the game turns out to be complete understanding.

Just another of the little ways in which I think AT is surprisingly well-done.

Harmo Up! purple sparkles fly

2008-10-30T22:35:00.000-07:00

I'm experiencing that weird phenomenon where I'm insufferably sleepy and groggy up until several hours after I wake up, then gradually become more alert throughout the night. As a result, I'm up at a ridiculous hour taking advantage of my (relative-- I'm still sort of drowsy, but at least not unbearably brainfoggy) clear-headedness.

Not too much to say, though, except that this passage from the Ar Tonelico OVA soundtrack commentary, translated by aquagon, really moved me:

Ishibashi-san divulged a little-known episode in which it took her four days to record just one song, and she thought her heart would break in the middle of recording. Also, Mitose-san related the story of how she recorded in a booth for hours in midsummer heat of over 40 degrees Celsius, then ended up dreaming in the Hymmnos language.

...waaah. I just, I love these people. I love their passion, I love their devotion, and every time I read aquagon's translations of the Hymmnos commentaries I glimpse a little bit more of that devotion. I wish I could tell them all how much it means to me that they care this much, and how much I care as well.

Thank you, aquagon, for letting me see into these people's hearts. Thank you, everyone, all of you who care, for your caring. Uwaaaa~.

(Hee, haounomiko, you were right when you said it's easy to see why I like Mir so much. I just... want to pour out my love to the world and never stop, I guess.)